Twenty years after Jules and Jim, in 1981, Truffaut’s twentieth feature film La Femme d’à côté is his penultimate movie, and his last about amour fou. In the meantime, he had made other films about encounters with “excessive” total passion, such as Mississippi Mermaid and The Story of Adèle H. La Femme d’à côté, however, is the most extreme  of all of them, with a more violent and extreme desire, a fusion of Eros-Thanatos that advances relentlessly forward, squeezing the lovers in a grasp that destroys them. “Love is war” wrote Jacques Rivière in his novel Aimée. At the time of the film, Truffaut shared his point of view: “In love, we often exchange blows of terrible violence… If I had to remake Jules and Jim today, I would not be so idyllic”… Truffaut approaches a theme that occupies much of his body of work from a new angle. Not, as the Latins say, the Omnia vincit amor that eventually emerges from the ruthless confrontation between the two main characters of Mississippi Mermaid. But “lovesickness” to the nth degree, with no way out for the couple imprisoned by it. If the filmmaker repeats himself, striking the same key over and over again, he always does so by adding new musical variations. The renewed intensity demonstrates the richness of his inner world and the seriousness of that obsession. Compared to previous films, the new element here is passion’s “return”. Bernard and Mathilde have already met, clashed, seized and destroyed each other eight years earlier. Their insane relationship – which Bernard finally recognises when telling his wife about it – has already been “damaging” for him and for his lover. Not because of their difference, more their equal instability. To believe that a singular experience can be relived is a delusion that leads to a tragic outcome. The filmmaker is absolutely certain about this, just as the Hitchcock of Vertigo was, even if for other reasons.

Ugo Casiraghi