Director: Pauline Loquès

Stars: Théodore Pellerin, William Lebghil, Salomé Dewaels, Jeanne Balibar

Director and co-writer Loquès emerges as a confident, fully-formed filmmaker with this small (at 85 minutes) but perfectly formed picture that recalls Agnes Varda’s ‘Cleo from 5 to 7’. Pellerin is the titular shy young man about to celebrate his twenty-ninth birthday. During a routine check-up the doctor blithely informs Nino that he has throat cancer. He will not be able to have children, but he will, the doctor assures him, get to keep his hair during the crucial treatment. Over the subsequent weekend, and after losing his house keys, Nino wanders around Paris contemplating his own mortality before beginning his treatment first thing on Monday. He sees his mother (Balibar), attends a surprise birthday party (amusingly), and bumps into an old school friend Zoe (Dewaels) and her son. Cowritten by the director with Maud Ameline, this is an elegant and delicate drama, the dark subject matter leavened with some lovely humour and moments of grace. Loquès, working with cinematographer Lucie Baudinaud, effectively conjures up the requisite air of liminality, and Pellerin, often captured in intense closeups, gives a winningly understated performance as a man lost in limbo in a world of momentum, before the messy business of life begins to drag him back in.