François Truffaut's La Femme d'à côté | The Woman Next Door (1981)

It's difficult for the viewer – and it was probably equally difficult for Truffaut himself – to figure out if Mathilde (Fanny Ardent) is a femme fatale or if both Mathilde and her lover Bernard (Gérard Depardieu) are both fated. Personally I go for the femme fatale idea, but it is in any case an extraordinary coincidence that brings the two former lovers back together, as neighbours.

Seven or eight years before, Bernard had a stormy but deeply intense relationship with Mathilde, although both are now married (Bernard to Arlette (Michèle Baumgartner) and Mathilde to Philippe (Henri Garcin). And now Mathilde wants to resume the affair, and after avoiding her Bernard capitulates, and the pair meet in the daytime in a hotel.

Neither Mathilde's nor Bernard's partners have any suspicions (Mathilde even having spoken about an affair with a 'manic depressive' to Bernard) of the former relationship, until Bernard explodes at a garden party, so bringing the affair into the open. Mathilde is subsequently hospitalised owing to a nervous breakdown, and when she recovers Philippe and Mathilde leave their property. But then Mathilde returns at night and blows both of their skulls off the planet during a final sex episode. Truffaut is obsessed with women, or should that be sex?