‘The nudity scene was not great’: Théodore Pellerin in dealing with his new challenges for the film Nino | Video

Jsix months after the end of the world gathered to protect poor Paul DanoRisk can now be the most important factor for a player. What is the “weak sauce” of Quentin Tarantino, who attacked Dano, may be too sweet for some. So it’s a good time for Théodore Pellerin, with his gangster look and big eyes, to show this quality in the new French study of Nino. Gauche, reticent and secretive, Pellerin is a typical Parisian teenager trapped in her apartment for the weekend after being diagnosed with papillomavirus (HPV)-related cancer.

Pellerin describes Nino’s difficulties, his inability to communicate clearly with his loved ones, almost down to the cellular level. He said: “His throat cancer is not small. “It is the part that connects the head and the body. There is a detachment of the body – a detachment from its mind. And because it comes from sexually transmitted diseases, his sexuality – the powerful force of life – is disrupted. So his goal is to talk and ejaculate.” Quick on that last point: Nino has to freeze his sperm because the treatment will make him sterile. His odyssey around Paris is gen Z’s answer to the French New Wave classic Cleo from 5 to 7which also affected the diagnosis of cancer. Only this time, it is impossible to find a good place to masturbate.

Diagnosing her self-esteem issues via Zoom call from her home in Montréal, Canada, Pellerin doesn’t seem vulnerable in real life. A crisp shirt rolled up his sleeves, with brown hair and clear glasses, he had the air of a business student between studies. He’s in between projects, waiting for a new shoot to begin in August after just finishing Tom Ford’s 18th-century drama Cry to Heaven.

His pages are quickly rising, not only for Nino but also for last year’s Lurker, in which he played a parasocial LA hipster desperate to ingratiate himself with a pop star. In this film her vulnerability takes on a dangerous importance, but it always seems to be Pellerin’s center of gravity. Strong roles – as a free school student in the 2018 Québécois crime film Family Firstor the pyramid-turned-trainer Kirsten Dunst in the 2019 TV series On Being God in Central Florida – have the right to be innocent.

Nino’s director Pauline Loquès, who also co-wrote the script, recognized that Pellerin had a certain quality. He said: “Théodore had the ability to silence people. “He was accused of other things – poetic, mystical or psychological.

Pellerin also said that Nino is actually a film about parenthood – which came as a story for Loquès, despite the number of parents or parents he met (including Mathieu Amalric who shaved later), and the natural clock that rose suddenly in the background. Loquès, 39, was a journalist. Did Pellerin see any risk in signing up for his first directing job? Au contraire: “Many great directors make very bad films. And if you write a very good film, the film will be very good – because the closer you get to your subject, the better you know it.”

He continues: “I never had the feeling that I had to force anything, or add fiction on top of what I was ‘living’ with other actors.” Perhaps this characteristic is what made him successful in the big scenes of the naked body. It would have been easier to move on, or hit on a dull joke, instead of creating an effective release moment.

Pellerin said: “It was stressful for Pauline because she didn’t want to do sex at a very important time in the film. “She wasn’t comfortable talking to me about the incident. We just had to stick to what we were really saying, and what represented the character and the film. I was just playing Karl Lagerfeld’s girlfriend Jacques de Bascher. in the TV seriesand the scandalous scene where I masturbate in a t-shirt. So Nino was not really difficult. “

If Pellerin speaks like a charmed person, it’s because he started very quickly, creatively encouraged by all sides of the family. His mother, Marie, is a composer; his father, Denis, an artist. After going to a high school that did sports, he took part in his first TV show, the popular school drama 30 Vies, aged 16. “I grew up in theater rooms, together with dancers from my mother’s troupe. So the theater was what I loved. It was playful, personal. Being an artist was not necessary to do what I was young – I was not necessary to do what I was young – I was not necessary to do. impossible in mind mine.”

Pellerin speaks to me in French, his Québécois twang growing as the conversation goes on. He quickly made history in his own language, playing the minor character of Vincent Cassel in Xavier Dolan’s. It’s the End of the World Only in 2016, he’s the most annoying and possibly insane younger sibling on the troubled street in Family First. But he recognized English roles as a way to advance his career, and he learned the language to appear as a young man struggling with his sexuality in 2017. Unsettled, Still Unsettledopposite Shirley Henderson.

He walks the fringes of Hollywood, appearing briefly as one of Joaquin Phoenix’s fictional children in Ari Aster’s. Beau is ScaredPellerin was very impressed with Lurker. His portrayal of LA in the film is flawless – and so is the RP he got to know as the castrato music professor in Cry to Heaven. In anglophone roles, he says, it’s all a question of tone: “There is a smart way to go with English, because words are made in such a way that, to have the right idea, consciously or unconsciously, you have to hit the right pronunciation. pap-a-pap-a-pap-pap-pap.” His hand moves up and down in an imaginary scale, like a conductor’s.

Pellerin is taking leading roles in both languages ​​now, but he needs time to use them to their full potential – he spoke in the past to be calm. Loquès explains: “He often says, ‘I’m not an actor but I know how to read very well. That’s the difference between him and other actors – he’s very strong in doing research on the surface. It’s a place of expansion for him. Then he tries to forget everything before he comes.”

The positions they held were the ones that went to town, unsurprisingly. With the First Family, he feared he might still have a sad feeling, when the Lurker group of famous leeches and hangers-on interfered again. The feeling of being rejected was very strong because this is what the person experienced in all situations.” Nino, however, was someone he didn’t want to leave. “It was going back to my life, to useless things. I was not dealing with death in the same way.

The way Pellerin is going, however, there will soon be others mentioned to me. I want to ask if they have already started to penetrate someone’s skin, at the top of the August shoot – but it’s too late. He has already told me that he has to leave in the afternoon. It’s becoming him and Dig into the character, though: his. “Er, I have my clinical session on Zoom now, that’s what I’ll be doing with my psychologist.” And with a wicked smile and a “merci”, he’s gone. Being vulnerable is a full-time job.