Dir: Pauline Loques | Cast: Theodore Pellerin, Salomé Dewaels, William Lebghil | France 2025 96’
In Paris Nino Clavell is grapelling with some very bad news. And from the get-go this deeply affecting drama channels his sense of bewilderment and confusion in the days following his hospital diagnosis. Unsettled he wanders through the streets of the capital trying to make sense of it all.
This candid and confident debut from first time writer director Pauline Loquès draws us into Nino’s story showing how delicate and discombobulating the next few months will be for this shy and reticent young man. And having a mother – Jeanne Balibar – like his, who is kind and understanding but who talks rather than listens means that Nino clams up in sharing the full extent of his negative news
The two then reminisce over his babyhood – and you get the feeling his mother is indulging herself rather than really hearing him and what he has to say. Instead Nino relaxes to the sound of A Forest by The Cure
Nino cuts a lonely, endearing figure as he drifts around the capital. He swings by his sister’s (Camille Rutherford) flat and they have a desultory conversation during which she shares news of her imminent move to Montreal but asks Nino nothing of his life.
At a birthday celebration everyone is so full of their own preoccupations they flood the conversation with trivial and banal and shooting up drugs. Nino is too respectful and obliging to talk about himself. Maybe he fears, justifiably, that once the news is out it will overwhelm him, and if he keeps it quiet he can control the outcome.
Sharing his illness with a close friend at the party once again produces a flood of their personal opinions rather than a simple request to let Nino talk about his feelings. Poor Nino is left alone and desperate his inner anxiety finally flooding out into the open when he’s alone, and we really feel for him in this thoughtful performance from Theodore Pellerin in a quietly compelling drama competing in this year’s Cannes Film Festival Critics’ Week and Golden Camera reflecting on the casual selfishness of ordinary people in times of crisis. @MeredithTaylor
SEMAINE DE LA CRITIQUE | 18 May 18.45