Count the many times Truffaut made films about uncontrollable desire and you'll end up with a fat pile of decomposing corpses. We can now add THE WOMAN NEXT DOOR (1981) to that rotting pile. Another dour, Hitchcockian tale about obsessive love and steamy secrets, with an ending so miserable I couldn't help but laugh. As I'm nearing the end of this Truffaut run, it's become apparent the guy only made films about four topics: 1). romantic obsessives, 2). self-destructive passions, 3). women who kill men, and 4). children. This one touches on all four themes in varying ways, and convinced me further that Truffaut's obsession with guilt, desire and faithless characters was really a reflection of his own renowned compulsion to womanize. Legend has it he kept up numerous affairs with all his actresses, even while married which led to painful divorces, so it makes sense that the rancid pile of male bodies in his films behave like acts of self-immolating atonement. THE WOMAN NEXT DOOR continues to reveal the terrible consequences of convicted passion. It works as one of Truffaut's better iterations of one of his most demon-haunted themes.

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