Two ex-lovers wind up living next door to each other with their respective spouses. Forbidden passions ensue.

Madame Jouve, the narrator, tells the tragedy of Bernard and Mathilde. Bernard was living happily with his wife Arlette and his son Thomas. One day, a couple, Philippe and Mathilde Bauchard, moves into the next house. This is the accidental reunion of Bernard and Mathilde, who had a passionate love affair years ago. The relationship revives... A somber study of human feelings.—Yepok

In Grenoble, Bernard Coudray and his wife Arlette Coudray are happily married with their son Thomas. When the next door house is rented to the flight controller Philippe Bauchard and his wife Mathilde Bauchard, Arlette invites the couple for a dinner party but Bernard avoids Mathilde. When they meet each other in the supermarket, they recall their love affair that traumatically ended eight years ago. However their love rekindles and they meet each other in a hotel room. But once together again, they have a stormy affair that ends again with tragic consequences.—Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Bernard and Arlette Coudray live with their young son Thomas in an idyllic village near Grenoble. When the couple Philippe and Mathilde Bauchard move into the long vacant house next door, Bernard is confronted with his past. He recognizes Mathilde as his former lover. Their relationship, as passionate as it was conflictual, ended many years ago, but they still carry the wounds of their time together. Their renewed encounter is not without consequences. Bernard initially tries to avoid Mathilde, but after a chance meeting in the supermarket they kiss and resume their affair. Unnoticed by their unsuspecting spouses, to whom they have kept their previous acquaintance secret, the two begin to meet regularly in a hotel. The outwardly neighborly friendship between the couples runs counter to the growth of obsessive passion. In fact, at a garden party, emotions erupt when Bernard begins to attack Mathilde in a fit of rage. The two separate once more and yet fail to avoid each other - with disastrous consequences ... The finality of this obsession is underlined by the use of a narrator, Madame Jouve, owner of the local tennis club, whose accounts frame the story. The sober, calm camera and touches of Hitchcock suspense also contribute to the film's claustrophobic mood.

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.—Huggo