Summary of this article
Nino follows a 29-year-old struggling with the discovery of his cancer diagnosis.
Nino stars Theodore Pellerin in the lead.
The film was screened at Red Lorry Film Festival.
The loneliness that envelops in the wake of diagnosis is central to Nino. Screened at Red Lorry Film Festival in Mumbai, Pauline Loquès’ beautifully measured feature debut finds its eponymous protagonist (Théodore Pellerin) treading choppy waters when, by accident, he discovers he’s got throat cancer. His reflex is disbelief. This cannot be true. His world goes off-kilter. He begins seeing everything through a haze. He gets detached on an elemental level, even as he remains a ready hand in others’ needs. Somewhere within, his channel of communication itself is cut off despite his unflagging, receptive attitude.
The assembly of medical tests is immediate. It sends Nino staggering. The 29-year-old is amidst noise, people, but he is like an island unto himself. Loquès signals to the ordinary selfishness of people caught in the relentless business of getting through the day and how it blinds them to each other’s tucked-under plea. But Nino isn’t always drumming with cynicism and defeat. There’s a turn of the road the film indicates, which first anticipates our own willing ownership of a situation, good or bad. The film unravels vis-à-vis Nino’s relationship with his mother, close friend Sofian (William Lebghil) and an ex-girlfriend (Camille Rutherford). Some of the best scenes arise from Nino’s renewed bond with his ex. He’s meeting her after years. She is now a mother and is on the move. Loquès depicts the ex-lovers’ looking at their future in opposition. Nino is turning away from what lies ahead. She’s prepared for it no matter the tight squeeze it will be. In conversations, he slowly musters strength.
Pellerin’s quiet reflectiveness squares for a crushing crisis without confrontation. Nino avoids asking for help. For the longest time, he’s battling denial, facing the fact of impending treatment in just a few days. He delays disclosure, hoping that might magically put out the cancer. He’s lonely, plummeting but puts on a bright front. Loquès refuses an angle of overt sympathy, walking an elegant balance, even when Nino’s contained despair almost invites it. She doesn’t tread familiar beats of encompassing an individual before and after diagnosis. It’s the latter stage wherein we’re drawn into the film. Nino stays simply concentrated on the thin days between diagnosis and the start of a complex, drawn-out treatment.
It’s tricky to wend between manufactured emotional miserabilism and situations inherently anguished. Nino is always scurrying from one place to another, cycling away from a fixed space and desisting from honest dialogue on his diagnosis. He listens to all, becomes an effortless sport, while hiding fear and secrets. The film situates him in movement, tense uncertainties and complete loss of moorings. Nino does have friends, but it takes a while before he opens up even to them. Neither does he confess to his mother. Loquès is a deft observer of relationships, even superior at capturing its breadth and texture in a single scene alone. When he lies to his mother that he’s instead been diagnosed with depression, she treats it bemusedly, but not dismissively. There’s warmth and care with which she indulges his company, yet no real candour exists for him to comfortably share the truth.
Nino charts the journey towards acceptance, especially before healing can claim place. There are things he ought to urgently finish. He’s reminded to submit his sperm at the clinic as soon as possible. If he fails, he would never have children. But he’s swept up, drifting and covering up panic and restlessness. There’s dodging and hesitation before committing to the task. When Nino does invest, time digs its blades in. Cinematographer Lucie Baudinaud keeps the affective tissue binding us to the fragility in Nino beneath the calm. Sound too is significant in how Nino’s private self becomes manifest, recurrently. We stay close with Nino through his lowest. The screenplay resists articulating his expectations and disappointments. But we sense how intensely he steers clear of making himself a burden on anyone. He’s reliable without stressing that he too wants some reciprocation. We are constantly failed by others and learn to live with emotional debris. However, Nino puts upfront kindness that may arrive if we choose gentleness again and again. There’s a positivity and resilience it reaffirms amidst frightening doubt, doom and darkness.
Nino screened at the ongoing Red Lorry Film Festival in Mumbai.
