About Joan (2022)

Retired French publisher Joan (Isabelle Huppert) has a surprise run in with her first love, Doug (Stanley Townsend) before heading to her home in the country. This triggers flashbacks to moments in her past, including their meeting at a train station back when she was an au pair living in Ireland in the 1970s and he was a pickpocket. We see some sexy moments as their younger selves, played by Freya Mavor and Éanna Hardwicke, with Freya flashing her bare breast in an alley, and learn that the two were working together to pull off some petty thievery before getting separated. She goes back to France to raise their son, Nathan, and eventually starts an on-again off-again romance with an alcoholic author (Lars Eidinger) who she meets in her new publishing career. Joan gets some assistance from her father (Fabrice Scott) after her mother (Florence Loiret Caille) runs off with her martial arts instructor to Japan, a side plot that shows the character’s new sensual self-discovery with a scene where she has sex with a giant octopus! Yep, you read that right. Inspired by a famous Hokusai woodblock called Dream of the Fisherman’s Wife, Florence’s tits are out while writhing around with her tentacled lover. The movie may be about Joan but we have a feeling that might be the bit everybody remembers most.