Nino      Director: Pauline LoquèsCert: 15AStarring: Théodore Pellerin, William Lebghil, Salome Dewaels, Jeanne BalibarRunning Time: 1 hr 37 minsThere is an apparent nod to Agnès Varda’s Cléo from 5 to 7 in this impressively nimble debut feature from Pauline Loquès. That renowned 1962 film followed a young actor as she bumped about Paris in the hours before receiving test results concerning a potentially serious stomach complaint. The new film is not quite as zippy as its nouvelle-vague predecessor, but there is a similar braveness in its brush against mortality. It takes guts to treat potentially grim material with such a light touch.The sense of grey, if not quite black, humour is in place from the opening scenes as Nino, played by the rising star Théodore Pellerin, attends an apparently routine medical appointment to discover the doctor thinks her patient has already been told he has throat cancer. After some muttering, the embarrassed doc moves on to the discussion of treatment. Nino is to begin chemotherapy in three days, and, at danger of becoming infertile, he is advised to deliver a sperm sample before arrival. This mix-up feels like exactly the sort of excruciating eventuality that happens more often in real life than in movies. “What are my chances of dying?” he asks. “Let’s talk chances of survival,” the doc says.We can read his apparent calmness in several ways. Perhaps Nino really is the sort of fellow to approach such challenges in a spirit of hope. Maybe he is stunned by the suddenness of it all. Or is he heading for an eventual collapse?Such is Nino’s introversion that he can bring himself to tell only a few people among friends and family. Preparing the ground for his mother with tense exhalations, he is amused when, in a very 2026 reaction, she asks if he has decided to transition and rattles out loving support for the wrong circumstance.Nino drifts about a Paris that surely now seems more poignantly, unfairly agreeable than ever. Shot with a wistful liquidity by Lucie Baudinaud, the film is unmistakably in thrall to an actor who exudes leading-man charisma. More is communicated in his fraught silence than any page of dialogue could manage.The miracle is that, from tragicomic opening up to a closing blast of Fontaines DC’s In the Modern World, Nino remains an affirmative experience throughout. Highly recommended.In cinemas from Friday, June 19th