La femme d'a cote

Odile Jouve, the manager of the local tennis club, narrates this story arguably because twenty years ago she tried to commit suicide over a failed romance, she still showing a physical manifestation of that suicide attempt. One side of the story is Bernard Coudray, an instructor in the captaining of oil tankers, and his loving wife Arlette Coudray, they living with their preschool aged son Thomas in a house at the end of a lane in a village outside of Grenoble. The other side of the story are who rent the house across the lane from them, newlyweds Philippe and Mathilde Bauchard, an air traffic controller and an illustrator of children's books, respectively. When all four meet together for the first time, Bernard and Mathilde do not show any signs to their spouses that they know each other, they having had a tempestuous romantic relationship that ended eight years ago, Philippe and Arlette only knowing of a troubled relationship in his/her spouse's past. There are moments of awkwardness between Bernard and Mathilde as Arlette and Philippe naturally want the four to become friends in their geographical proximity thus making it difficult for Bernard and Mathilde to avoid each other even if they wanted to. When Bernard and Mathilde do have a moment alone for the first time, they demonstrate that there are still obvious feelings between them as they eventually embark on a clandestine affair. While there is the sexual passion that exists between them, the issues that drove them apart eight years ago still exist as issues now and as part of their shared history, these contradictions which in this situation have the potential to be an explosion combination.