How Théodore Pellerin Brought Life to a Character Facing Death

In Nino, French Canadian actor Théodore Pellerin plays a young Parisian man living through three of the most transformative days of his life. The debut feature from French filmmaker Pauline Loqués, which premiered during Cannes’ Critics Week and scored the Rising Star Award for Pellerin, opens on a regular Friday in Paris, as Nino awaits some routine test results at the doctor’s office. Within moments, his life has changed: he has throat cancer, likely resulting from a sexually-transmitted infection years before, and on Monday he must begin radiotherapy. The treatment will render him infertile, so he has three days to bring his sperm to fertility services to be frozen.

The immediate kicker: he’s locked out of his apartment, making that last instruction somewhat difficult. Over the next three days, Nino wanders aimlessly through Paris, stopping by his mother’s house, his own birthday party, and the apartment of Zoe (a new romance), as the young man struggles to find the words for his sudden reckoning with his mortality. Captured with a gentle realism by Loqués, Nino’s weekend is punctuated with beautifully unconventional exchanges of tenderness as he works his way out of solitude – such as assisting an old friend with her fertility injections, or a comically sweet, non-physical sexual encounter towards the film’s end.

Mastermind met Pellerin at Cannes to discuss how Nino’s diagnosis brings him “back to life,” the power of staring into your loved ones’ eyes and the differences between French, Canadian and American filmmaking.

A lot of films about illness, or people facing their mortality, are often about their treatment or recovery, but Nino takes place in the days before he starts treatment, before everything changes. What attracted you to that element of the storytelling?

THÉODORE PELLERIN You’re right in saying that it’s about to change everything, but I think it’s within those three days that the biggest shift happens. I think we are telling the story of someone who is extremely disconnected from life, and kind of leaning towards death before it starts; who has an inability to talk and to connect. I think he’s a very lonely man. And I was moved by the fact that then a diagnosis forces him back into life. He’s locked out of his apartment, so he can’t just spend three days there. He’s forced to be swallowed up by the city and by the people that he meets, forced into physical contact and emotional contact with people, which is something that he’s probably escaping from most of the time, or for a while. We’re telling the story of someone who is facing mortality in a much more tangible way, and then that brings him back to life. And I thought that was brilliant. 

Nino is distant from his friends, and holds back from telling them the truth about his diagnosis, but despite that he gradually forms quite profound connections throughout the film, often without words. Why do you think he still feels a pull towards people, even when words escape him?

TP That was telling me that it’s not that he doesn’t like people, and it’s not that he doesn’t want to connect to them, but there is an inability to name the things that really need to be said, right? I think it’s the unconscious fear of making it real when you’re saying it aloud—the cancer. I think he probably also grew up in a household where there is closeness with his mother, and there is warmth, but there’s also silence around the father’s death. He asks questions, and it seems like it’s the first time that he has those questions, but it’s been almost 15 years since the death. The mum says, ‘What does it matter? What would it change?’ So she’s open, but she probably didn’t really help him grieve. It was probably just too hard for her to address that. He’s forced into closeness and physical contact, so I think he has tenderness for people and an interest in them. 

Nino remembers his father passing away, but his mother doesn’t talk about it. Within that context, what do you think his understanding of mortality is when he gets this diagnosis?

TP I think people can have very different understandings of the movie, but to me, he’s someone who was probably hoping for his death a lot before the diagnosis, or kind of often in that space.So when it falls on him, it just changes where it sits. It’s not just something that he thinks, it becomes incredibly real. I think there’s a real change in how he sees it, and also it touches on parenthood and passing on mortality. His father died, and then there’s, of course, his inability to orgasm and to then have the possibility of bringing someone to life. But I think it also comes from a probably unconscious fear of giving someone the inevitability of death, too.

I loved the reference to Marina Abramovic, who Zoe (Salomé Dewaels) has a poster of on her wall, and she then suggests they try out Abramovic’s famous staring. How did it feel for you to test that out? 

TP I think we did it for five minutes, and we did it once, and the camera was just kind of rolling between us. It was just very moving immediately. It took us 20 seconds to be in tears, really looking at each other. I don’t know why it was so quick. I love Salomé, and she’s very open, but she also hides things a little bit, and it was great to just sit and look at her. 

It’s rare in life that you get the chance to just look at people you love like that.

TP I did it once when I was younger, for like, 30 minutes with someone, and it was amazing. It’s really incredible, everything that you learn about someone and the connection that is created by doing that, it’s very unexpected. The eyes are crazy.

Pauline Loquès follows Nino with this very natural, fly-on-the-wall style as we’re drifting with him through Paris. How did that style manifest on set?

TP A lot of it comes from the energy that she makes on her set. She’s very loving and very warm, and she sees people very acutely. I felt that I was sometimes being seen in ways that I didn’t even know I was, and for that, there has to be a lot of love, to reveal someone’s soul in a way that you don’t even know. There has to be a real care and interest about them. 

A lot of films set in Paris have great cycling scenes, like Ira Sach’s Passages. There’s a scene where Nino is cycling breezily to a party, but I’ve always wanted to know what it’s actually like filming cycling scenes on real Paris streets.

TP It was hard, because it’s very technical. There was actually a longer scene that I think got cut, but the car was following me and then losing me and then finding me again. So it was a real timing thing, and then it’s Paris so there’s cars everywhere, and it’s impossible, and then the light was falling. So it was a bit hard, it’s not like shooting a cycling scene in the country.

I wanted to ask about the character’s voice, because he’s told early on that his voice might have changed recently from his cancer, but he’s not sure if it has. How did you work with Pauline to find Nino’s voice?

TP Pauline was telling me for a while, ‘I think you should find his voice’ And I was like, ‘Okay,’ and then one day, she just told me that I had the voice. I don’t think I worked on the voice, so I was just like, ‘Okay, great.’ It just came from connecting to the character, and it became clearer and clearer. I never make conscious choices, it always comes as something that can’t be otherwise, you know, a way of moving or talking that is just: that’s how the character is. Sometimes I’m a bit confused by actors who are like, ‘It’s always in the choices.’ I’m like, what choices? I never make a choice. There’s always just something that is clear, that needs to be that.

You work in Canada, France, and you’ve worked in English-language cinema as well. How do you find independent filmmaking differs in each place? 

TP It’s hard to pinpoint, because already within even from one country in itself, every set is so different, just because it’s always dependent on the personalities of people, the dynamics and the themes of the film. There’s maybe more distance in the US. There’s less direction, a little bit less closeness, and much more physical proximity and emotional proximity in France or Quebec. But I don’t know. I don’t think it’s true of everything, I don’t want to generalise. People talk more about money in the US and less in France.

It’s funny because I was at Sundance this year [with Lurker], and I’m like, ‘Oh, this is a market.’ It’s not about what movie is good, it’s about what movie sells. Those are the most important articles by, I don’t know, IndieWire, when the story is, ‘This movie sold for $15 million.’ That’s exciting, but it’s not the biggest point of it. I don’t want to trash talk, because I had a movie that sold high, but yeah, it’s just very different.

To finish up, who is your Mastermind?

TP Many, but I would say Virginia Woolf is my Mastermind. It’s very obvious, just the train of thought that she writes, but for an actor it’s incredible to have access in that way to someone’s psyche. Reading her, it was the first time I felt I had such access into someone’s thoughts, and so incredibly real, that it even revealed to me how we think and how quickly we’re taken by something, and then taken in another direction. I just think it’s, obviously, brilliant.