Just six months after the world rallied to defend poor Paul Dano, vulnerability may now be a hot commodity for an actor. What is “weak sauce” for Quentin Tarantino, who attacked Dano, can be mighty savoury for others. So it’s good timing that Théodore Pellerin, with his gangly frame and huge eyes, exudes that quality in the new French character study Nino. Gauche, hesitant and withholding, Pellerin is magnetic as a young Parisian locked out of his apartment for a weekend after a papillomavirus (HPV)-related cancer diagnosis.
Pellerin explains Nino’s predicament, his inability to be candid with his loved ones, almost down to the cellular level. “His throat cancer isn’t insignificant,” he says. “It’s the part that links the head to the body. There’s a dissociation from the body – a distancing of his emotions. And because it comes from a sexually transmitted disease, his sexuality – a strong life force – is stunted too. So his mission is to speak and to ejaculate.” Urgently in the case of the latter: Nino must freeze his sperm as his treatment will make him infertile. His odyssey around Paris is the gen Z answer to French New Wave classic Cléo de 5 à 7, which also revolved around a cancer diagnosis. Only this time, it’s about the impossibility of finding a good place to masturbate.
