One of a cycle of thrillers made during the early 1990s which were set around husband and wife characters. The films include Malice (1993), Trahie (1991), Troubles (1991), Pensées mortelles (1991), Obsession fatale (1992), Présumé innocent (1990), L'Avocat du diable (1993), Les nuits avec mon ennemi (1991), and Un baiser avant de mourir (1991).
The film cast includes three Oscar winners: Kevin Kline, Kevin Spacey, and Forest Whitaker; and one Oscar nominee: Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio.
This was the second film on which Kevin Kline and director Alan J. Pakula worked together. The first was Le choix de Sophie (1982).
The name of the working title for the earlier film Changement de saisons (1980) was "Consenting Adults". In Bombay Talkie (1970), the name of the best-seller trash-romantic page-turner pulp-fiction novel that Jackie Collins / Jacqueline Susann - like English authoress Lucia Lane (Jennifer Kendal) had written was "Consenting Adults", a title itself which became the name of at least four later unrelated filmed productions (Consenting Adults (1982), this film, Consenting Adults (2000), and Consenting Adults (2007)).