Nino review – fails to pull its punches

While at the GP collecting some routine test results, Nino (Théodore Pellerin) is suddenly asked if he has his cancer-care routine sorted. He’s shocked, as the GP has unfortunately skipped a feedback stage and hasn’t actually mentioned the fact that Nino has throat cancer. Fair play to writer/​director Pauline Loquès for opting to make a film that talks in a level-headed and unsentimental manner about what it feels like as a young person to be told that you’ve got cancer. Whether anyone would actually want to watch that film is another story, especially one that seems so desperate to hide the practical stigma attached to cancer in favour of profiling hip, gangly dude Nino, who opts to hide his diagnosis from friends and family. We get some solid, naturalistic performances and a few intriguing/​awkward social situations, but very little about what it means to have cancer and the arduous process of actually having to deal with it.

We drift through the weekend prior to his first chemotherapy session, heading to his pal’s birthday, visiting his nostalgic mother and making a random hook-up with an old school friend. As superficially entertaining as it all is, it feels like Loquès is on a mission to keep things fun, lively and romantic, to the point where Nino wouldn’t be a massively different film if its hero had been given a clean bill of health.