LEMON TREE meets JOHN LE CARRÉ in a subtle thriller set in Germany involving Mona, a Lebanese woman (Golshifteh Farahani), and Naomi, an Israeli Mossad agent (Neta Riskin) sent to protect their informant while recovering from plastic surgery for her new identity. Mona and Naomi - together for two weeks in a quiet apartment in Hamburg. A safe house. A shelter. No one saw what was coming, no one knew that this supposedly quiet fortnight would turn into an abyss and that shelter would need to be found elsewhere. The intimacy of the relationship that develops between the two women is exposed to the threat of terror that is engulfing the world today. In this game of deception, beliefs are questioned and choices are made that are not their own. And yet their fate takes a surprising turn in this suspense-laden, elegant neo-noir.
Nymphomaniac is a wild, poetic drama about a woman's erotic journey from birth to the age of 50 as told by the main character, the self-diagnosed nymphomaniac, Joe (Charlotte Gainsbourg). On a cold winter's evening the old, charming bachelor Seligman (Stellan Skarsgård) finds Joe beaten up in an alleyway. He brings her home to his flat where he tends to her wounds while asking her about her life. He listens intently as Joe, over the next eight chapters, recounts the lustful story of her highly erotic life. Seligman reads a lot of books, from which he has acquired various general knowledge. He connects the stories told with what he has read about.
The story is divided in two volumes and eight chapters, Volume I follows Young Joe as portrayed by Stacy Martin, while the older Joe in Seligman's apartment is played by Gainsbourg, and Volume II follows Joe as portrayed by Charlotte Gainsbourg.