Lukas Dhont is one of the biggest success stories from the Belgian film industry in recent memory.
At age 26, he won the Caméra d'Or at Cannes for his first film, Girl. He was promptly upgraded to Competition with his next film, Close, which won the Grand Prix and received an Academy Award nomination for Best International Film.
Now comes his third and most ambitious film, Coward, which this time won a joint actor prize for its leading men, Emmanuel Macchia and Valentin Campagne, at Cannes. Dhont is gay and has always centered queer experiences in his cinema. Coward is no different and focuses on a blossoming romance between two young conscripts on the frontlines of World War I. In a departure from his previous films, however, the tone is largely free of misery and trauma, allowing for the possibility of happiness and redemption.
Coward could be described as a war film without war, as there are no actual combat scenes. It focuses primarily on the downtime between successive military charges.
We do know the Great War is raging on: We can constantly hear the heavy shelling in the background and see smoke in the distance. We also see stacks of wounded and dead soldiers being brought in, and the survivors digging mass graves for the departed. But generally, war violence stays pointedly off-screen.
And that is of a piece with the filmmaking style adopted by Dhont, who unrelentingly films the entirety of Coward with a hand-held, medium-shot, shallow-focus aesthetic, tethering us to the subjective and spontaneous experience of the two leads. That doesn't leave room for much else in the frame.
It isn't nearly as limiting, though, as say the style pioneered by László Nemes in his Oscar-winning Son of Saul and later used to smothering, exasperating effect in Sunset. It is a considerable refinement, and the images by cinematographer Frank van den Eeden are frequently pretty and sometimes arresting.
The mise-en-scène may partly reflect the modest resources available to a Belgian art film made for the festival circuit. Coward couldn't have constructed large-scale battlefields with hundreds of extras amid expensive period machinery. It isn't really to the film's detriment, though, as Coward ably trades the scope and spectacle of wide shots for the intimacy and immediacy of expressive faces and bodies.
This is where the leads shine and make Coward engrossing throughout its two-hour runtime. Pierre was a farmer before the war, while Francis was a tailor. Pierre functions as a frontline soldier, at least in the limited trench activity we are shown.
In contrast, Francis leads a troupe of revue performers, wryly titled "Band of Rejects," composed of injured or incapacitated soldiers who are temporarily excused from frontline duties to mount entertainments to maintain the army's morale. The male soldiers shave their legs, put on skirts, wear makeup and sing and dance in productions that would today be deemed drag shows.
But these were among the few entertainments available, as there were no women around. Contrary to what you might imagine, these gender-bending drag shows are generally treated with respect and admiration by the other soldiers. They aren't an automatic target for homophobia, at least in Coward.
The primary dramatic engine besides the burgeoning romance between Pierre and Francis is Pierre's disillusionment with the war. Opening scenes have him full of bravado and enthusiasm alongside the other young men being led to slaughter, as if war were one big adventure. Slowly, after hauling the corpses of friends, rescuing colleagues who have lost limbs, and witnessing fellow soldiers urinating in food intended for enemy prisoners of war, Pierre snaps and begins looking for a way out.
The title Coward is deployed as a challenge to viewers as various characters confront the gender expectations of masculinity in a wartime scenario. Is performing in a revue to secure an exemption from the front any more cowardly than deserting? Dhont doesn't judge his characters for the choices they make, always grounding their humanity as they navigate an unforgiving world with random death just around the corner.
Macchia and Campagne are excellent and deserve their flowers. Macchia is strapping and taciturn yet remarkably open in his emotional expression, whereas Campagne finds complexity beneath Francis's flamboyance. The musical performances led by Campagne are beautiful, and several group scenes of the soldiers together are appropriately raucous and energetic.
Pierre and Francis eventually consummate their attraction in a sex scene that remains exceptionally restrained, without even overt nudity. Ultimately, for all its sensitivity and craft, Coward remains a minor work: pleasant, humane and watchable in its modesty, but not nearly piercing enough to linger in the memory.