GFF 2026 Review: We Need To Talk About Nino
"We need to talk" is one of the most frightening sentences in the English language, but what makes it so? The anticipation, the dreadful wait, and the scenarios running through one’s mind. This is what watching Nino felt like. Pauline Loquès drops her audience into that exact void and holds us there for a languid, agonizing, and ultimately life-affirming weekend.
On the eve of his 29th birthday, during what was supposed to be a routine check-up, Nino, played by French-Canadian Théodore Pellerin, receives a throat cancer diagnosis. The doctor, with the chilling calm of someone delivering everyday news, tells him he is "lucky" because treatment can start immediately. He can begin his chemotherapy next Monday. This leaves Nino with a single weekend of freedom before his life is handed over to treatment. He thinks of his father, who passed recently, and the film follows him as he is swept away by combined grief. He wanders the streets of Paris in a daze, running into friends and family. When he finally seeks refuge in his apartment, he realizes he has lost his keys, which forces him to go to his mother's house.
But the blow arrives after the diagnosis. The doctor informs him that the chemotherapy will render him infertile, and he must provide a sperm sample before Monday. This task becomes the urgent mission of his weekend, which proves gargantuan.
In its structure, Nino is a film that so closely resembles the French New Wave, specifically the tradition of Agnès Varda's Cléo from 5 to 7. But whereas Cléo's journey is solitary, Nino's is punctuated by the people who care for him. His weekend becomes a pilgrimage through his own brain, wading through his mental rolodex of his loved ones. He reconnects with friends, asks his mother questions, and thinks about his deceased father. It is not grand or melodramatic, but it is real.
Pellerin is far from a newcomer, with roles in Never Rarely Sometimes Always, Maid, and most recently, Lurker, and yet his boyish shyness here is stunning. He carries the film, but also bounces off everyone else's energy.
My favourite part of the film is the different relationships the characters have with Nino, most of which are tinged with French affectations and yet very gentle with the timid Nino. There is Zoé, an old classmate who runs into him while he is trying and failing to take a sperm sample. He doesn't remember her, but their bond, which teeters between romantic and platonic, is very sweet and is one of the kindest parts of the film. The film is also wonderful at portraying male friendships when it comes to his best friend, Sofian, who throws him a surprise birthday party and notices that Nino is hiding something. And there is his ex, played by Camille Rutherford, whose soft presence reminded me of her role in Jane Austen Wrecked My Life. Everyone passes through his life, trying to have a space, but his timid nature and his fear of mortality cling to every interaction. The film worked best the more it highlighted the act of that togetherness.
If you like “a day in the life” movies, Nino is for you. Although it is very potent, it will not devastate you. But it will make you introspect, which I believe is much stronger.
