François Truffaut's "La femme d’á côte" (1981): An intimate portrait of human passions

Production still La femme d’á côte (1981)

     Before I get to the actual film review, let me explain why I admire French director Francois Truffaut. Not only was Truffaut a terrific film critic (The Films in my Life) and one of the leading forces behind the "Nouvelle vague" at the beginning of the 1960. With other directors like Godard, Rivette and Chabrol, Truffaut proposed successfully a director driven cinema outside of the French studio system, but what impressed me most about Truffaut was his ability to render his difficult childhood experience productive. In most of his movies, the perspective of children and adolescents is included. 

     As a young teenager, I saw my first Truffaut movie, perhaps it was Les deux Anglaises et le Continent (Two English Girls, 1971). Suffice it to say, the film made a lasting impression on me not only because of its complex portrayal of sexuality in Victorian times, but also because Truffaut manages to convey the mutual exclusiveness of romantic love and passionate lust in his portrayal of a menage a trois between two English sisters and a young Frenchmen. The movie I want to discuss today is the second to last of his film before his untimely death in 1984. Although the movie takes place in contemporary France and is produced ten years after Les deux Anglaises et le Continent, it shares with it the theme of the unruliness of human passions.

The Woman Next Door, (1981)

    In Truffaut's concept of human sexual relations, men may be the initiators, but women are the engines. “Men know little about love,'' he said. ''They are always beginners. The heroine is usually the stronger. I think men live a love story but without being able to remark [on] it. They have no time. They live it without controlling it intellectually. Women, on the other hand, both live love and are able to remark [on] it. A woman is constantly saying: now I am happy, now I am happier, now I am not as happy. And acting upon this. It is women who act. Women are the professionals at love; men are the amateurs.''

     The motor of Truffaut's films, whether obsessional or exploratory, remains the relation of men and women. Love makes the cameras go 'round. ''For me, it is more important than social questions,'' the director said. ''It is the way to lead people to truth. There is more truth in sentimental relations than in social relations. There is more truth in the bedroom than in the office or the board room.'' Emotions count. ''Take children, a little boy or girl. They are more true when they are crying than when playing with soldiers or dolls. Those games are simply imitations of adults.'' For Truffaut, a great many adult activities - politics, moneymaking, and power - are games that adults play to imitate adults. ''The film says simply that you can't save anything. And I find myself not equipped to make films about these efforts - politics, ambition - to save things.''

     The question the film inadvertently raises is: if emotions really would be more important then rationality, why are the characters doomed to feel the strongest emotion, passionate love? One might also wonder, why we see in passionate love an ideal to strive for, if our society tries to keep unruly passions in check? And finally, is it really true that women are in a privileged position when it comes to matters of the heart? Truffaut, for one, seems to shed some doubt on this gendered myth.