‘Coward’ Review: Belgian Soldiers Find Love in Lukas Dhont’s Hidden Romance Masterpiece [A] Cannes
Lukas Dhont has a penchant for one-word titles: Girl, Close, Coward. On the surface, they’re almost aggressive in their curtness, rigid in their definition. But underneath lies the truth, and the director’s intent that there’s more than meets the eye.
With his first two films, young Belgian director Dhont established himself as one of the directors to watch for his generation. Both premiered in Cannes, with 2018’s Girl earning him the Camera d’Or for best first film (it screened in the Un Certain Regard section of the festival), then his follow-up Close (2022) got him a spot in the main competition, where he took home the Grand Prize. The film also earned an Oscar nomination for International Feature Film. Both films dealt with the turmoil of adolescence, accepting how to love yourself and the discovery of love for someone else. Now he arrives with a defining masterpiece, graduating to adulthood and merging the two previous themes with the story of two Belgian soldiers during World War I, fighting to stay alive and finding love in the process.
Coward opens with a group of rowdy young men in their military garb, on a train to a future they can’t really comprehend. For many it will be the last moment of childlike naiveté, and they raucously sing the traditional marching song “Pack Up Your Troubles in Your Old Kit-Bag” by George and Felix Powell. “Smile, boys, that’s the style!,” the chant goes, growing louder with each new verse. “Smile, smile, smile. While you’ve a lucifer to light your fag,” adds a tinge of what we know that word to be both traditionally and pejoratively, a highly charged word from a modern day perspective, but with a duality fitting for this story and for Dhont.
We first meet Pierre (the impossibly Bottega model handsome Emmanuel Macchia in his first ever role), the son of an apple farmer and nicknamed Tall Rookie and Quiet Mouse by his fellow soldiers. Macchia is fantastic, a vessel and visage, with a smile as wide as the Meuse, trying to keep the terror at bay. Although still young, he’s already war worn, looking for a way to get out, escape even. Days are spent loading and unloading artillery shells for cannons, trudging through the cold mud risking their lives crossing into no man’s land to rescue and retrieve the bodies of their fellow men. There’s cruelty towards German prisoners of war, including pissing in their daily ration of soup and potatoes. “All is lost,” says a soldier at one point, a place so many reach, including one soldier for whom the film’s name defines him.
But there is a light here, a savior of sorts, in the flamboyant and impish Francis (Valentin Campagne, a flawless performance), who breaks the tension and turmoil by putting on original plays and musicals. Like with Shakespeare, the men in full (or partial) drag to play the women’s parts. Francis is the son of a tailor and whips together burlap sack skirts and bras, as well as dramatic gowns that would befit a Drag Race maxi challenge. He’s an open flirt who locks onto Pierre, first with a longing stare and then to lure him into joining their performances. Pierre, an introvert, has no interest but Francis is convincing. “Close your eyes,” he says, as he paints a picture of Da Vinci paintings and crystal chandeliers. Hands gently and carefully caress, gauging not only Pierre’s willingness to be a part of the show but if the secret attraction they each hold is the same one. It is, and the young men reveal themselves to each other, meeting up for late night trysts that escalate from simple kissing to more. “Do you know how to?,” Pierre asks. “No,” says Francis. A scene where Francis is shaving his legs for a performance (he’s very committed), Pierre asks to do it and you’ve never seen or heard anything more erotic in your life as Valerie De Loof and Flavia Cordey’s sound design picks up every slow scrape, going up to Francis’s thigh.
Frank Van den Eeden, who has lensed all of Dhont’s films, captures the spectacularly savage war wounds of battle and the sun and candle-kissed warmth with equal purpose and care, the starkness of death in concert with the golden hue of Pierre and Francis’s hair and bodies. With each new number, costume designer Isabel Van Rentergem and production designer Eve Martin immerse us further. Valentin Hadjadj’s moody and evocative score is a highlight, steering away from convention and bombastic overindulgence, favoring instead something more intimate.
In the midst of the horrors of war and the brutality of man, Dhont and his co-writer collaborator Angelo Tijssens do something that feels revolutionary. If you’re familiar with Dhont’s work, you’ll know that sorrow, sadness and heartbreak are cornerstones of his films. Coming out stories, especially when they involve a burgeoning romance where one is more ‘out’ than the other, the trappings often involve one turning on the other to save face in front of other boys and men. Add a military component and you think you know exactly what’s going to happen. But Francis is no victim; he’s not only embraced by his troop, they revere him. Call it non-toxic masculinity. “l’union fait la force,” if you will. In one instance, where Francis is in jeopardy from an outsider, it’s Pierre that comes to his rescue under the guise of his costumed character in the play they’re performing for generals and high society.
That isn’t to say that direct, open love for each other would have been met with open arms; it’s still a secret. But it’s in these performances where Pierre and Francis are the most free. In play after play, musical after musical, they get to enact their love in front of everyone; real for them, pretend for the audience. In one moving scene, Francis is adorned in a wedding dress and the pair fully exchange vows that seal their love, not knowing if they’d have one more day together let alone a future and what that would look like. We often talk about the power of cinema, of art, of theatre. What Coward does with this idea is transformative. It’s Dhont at his most tender and his most mature, crafting a stunning piece of work and one of the best films of the year, of any year. With each new story, he’s finding deeper crevices to explore with gender and sexuality of queer and not-so-queer spaces and, dare I say, a bit of hope. Maybe all isn’t lost after all.This review is from the 2026 Cannes Film Festival where Coward world premiered In Competition.
This review is from the 2026 Cann=s Film Festival where Coward world premiered In Competition.
He is a Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic, accredited by the Cannes Film Festival, Telluride Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival and more, is a member of the International Cinephile Society (ICS), The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics (GALECA), Critics Choice Association (CCA), San Francisco Bay Area Film Critics Circle (SFBAFCC) and the International Press Academy. Among his many achieved goals with AwardsWatch, he has given a platform to underrepresented writers and critics and supplied them with access to film festivals and the industry and calls the Bay Area his home where he lives with his husband and son.
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