On a Friday morning, Nino attends a follow-up doctor’s appointment, where he is given some upsetting news that he has throat cancer. The treatment will start on Monday morning, but there is a high chance that it might leave him infertile, so the doctor tells him to consider freezing his sperm if there is a chance he might want children in the future. Shaken by the diagnosis - the day before his 29th birthday - and having never had to think about whether he wanted children before, an overwhelmed Nino leaves the hospital, not knowing what to do next.
When he randomly bumps into an old school friend, who shakes something within him, he embarks on a journey of introspection. Over the course of the weekend, he traverses the streets of Paris, forced to come to terms with his life - past and present - and to reconnect with friends, his family and himself.
The Garden Cinema View:
Can a decent drama be made out of a passive, introverted protagonist? Yes, if he is just 29 and receives a serious cancer diagnosis in the first ten minutes. The real brilliance of Pauline Loquès's debut is that this news doesn't trigger any major, unrealistic character shift, but rather a delicate one, showing how Nino interacts with his loved ones (past, current, and new) as he drifts from one encounter to the next across Paris.
The film echoes Cléo from 5 to 7 and some of the best films of François Ozon in its portrait of a life suspended in the wait for news that can change everything. By the end of Nino's Parisian flânerie, we are fully with our insecure protagonist, subtly turning towards life, played with raw, understated emotion by Théodore Pellerin.
Nino contains a sequence of flashing lights, which might affect viewers with photosensitive epilepsy.
