Joan Verra (Isabelle Huppert) is driving her car one rainy night when she addresses the camera, breaking the fourth wall to tell us her complicated life story, reflecting on the various men she has loved and lost over the course of four decades.

Newly retired from her well-paid publishing job in Paris, she is en route to her tranquil country estate, her nostalgic ruminations having been triggered by a chance encounter with Irishman Doug (Stanley Townsend), a former lover from her time working as an au pair in Ireland in the 1970s. In flashback, we witness how the young Joan (Freya Mavor) is drawn into the orbit of the charismatic Doug (Éanna Hardwicke), a petty criminal, an encounter that ultimately sees her arrested, deported, and pregnant. Joan’s enigmatic, elliptical narrative takes in further digressions as she recounts her life as a single parent in France.

Notes by David O’Mahony