{"id":447,"date":"2026-05-21T22:09:32","date_gmt":"2026-05-21T22:09:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/relocationobserver.com\/?p=447"},"modified":"2026-05-21T22:09:32","modified_gmt":"2026-05-21T22:09:32","slug":"coward-review-lukas-dhont-brings-his-signature-aching-sensuality-to-the-war-is-hell-genre-and-makes-his-most-satisfying-film-to-date","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/relocationobserver.com\/?p=447","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Coward\u2019 Review: Lukas Dhont Brings His Signature Aching Sensuality to the War-is-Hell Genre, and Makes His Most Satisfying Film to Date"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n\tEven the manifold mudbaths and bloodbaths of the Western Front can\u2019t do much to dirty up Lukas Dhont\u2018s exactingly exquisite filmmaking in \u201cCoward,\u201d the young Belgian director\u2019s third feature, and his first to extend his recurring interest in challenged LGBTQ identity to a historical context. Observing the burgeoning romance between two Belgian soldiers \u2014 one outwardly masculine but harboring a secret, the other testing the norms of gender presentation in the aggressively patriarchal military \u2014 fighting the First World War, the new film is clearly of a piece with Dhont\u2019s previous works, 2018\u2019s controversial trans youth portrait \u201cGirl\u201d and 2022\u2019s heartbroken childhood tragedy \u201cClose,\u201d in its intimate foregrounding of vulnerable queer characters and the quivery sensory specificity with which it portrays them.<\/p>\n

Read more Zendaya Says Filming \u2018Spider-Man: Brand New Day\u2019 With Tom Holland Was Like a \u2018Family Affair\u2019: \u2018I Get to Go to Work Every Day With My Best Friend, the Person That I Love\u2019<\/a><\/p>\n

\n\tBut even as it doubles down on the virtues of those previous films \u2014 among them Dhont\u2019s sure, sensitive hand with young actors, his knack for bringing internalized emotion rawly to the surface, his regular DP Frank van den Eeden\u2019s immaculate command of light and framing \u2014 \u201cCoward\u201d feels pleasingly like a step forward, continuing all the aforementioned thematic investigations without resorting to the kind of battering-ram tragedy or shock tactics that made both \u201cGirl\u201d and \u201cClose,\u201d for all their accomplished qualities, quite divisive. It\u2019s not because \u201cCoward\u201d is focused this time on (just about) adult characters that it feels like the filmmaker\u2019s most mature film to date. Meanwhile, his warm, delicate handling of, for the first time, an out-and-out love story should entice a wider audience to this Cannes competition entry.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhich isn\u2019t to say that \u201cCoward\u201d is a particularly soft film. Indeed, Dhont dives full-bore into the visceral spectacle of the period combat movie, not flinching from the requisite blood, guts and disconnected limbs of the battlefield. But the mission of the film isn\u2019t merely to tell us that war is hell: After all, we recently had Edward Berger\u2019s comparably handsome \u201cAll Quiet on the Western Front\u201d remake to remind us of that with regard to this war in particular.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tRather, \u201cCoward\u201d centers the tension between the severe terrors of warfare and the silent, interior anxiety of the male outsider afraid of being found out, countered with the bracing, buoying rush of first love, however inconveniently timed and placed. It\u2019s interesting that an executive producer on Dhont\u2019s film, Jack Sidey, produced South African director Oliver Hermanus\u2019 superb queer soldier portrait \u201cMoffie\u201d a few years back; the two films have rather a lot to say to each other.<\/p>\n

\n\tSomeone who doesn\u2019t have a lot to say, to anyone at all, is Pierre (Emmanuel Macchia, in a remarkable screen debut), a sturdily built farmboy with sandy cropped hair and a wide mouth that, when not clamped shut, twitches uncertainly. It\u2019s some time before we even learn his name, given that few in his unit seem to know it either: \u201cTall rookie\u201d is what he tends to be called, and he accepts that sportingly as he does everything required of him, whether lugging missiles off trucks or running into battle, clutching a bayonet with a fast but unsure grip. Only one of his cohorts looks at him a litte more closely: That would be Francis (Valentin Campagne, recently seen in \u201cCase 137\u201d), a gaunt, willowy blond who moves more like a dancer than a fighter, and makes no great effort to correct that for the army\u2019s alpha male gaze.<\/p>\n

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\n\tA tailor by trade, Francis is also a skilled singer and actor, and hits on the idea of forming a small performing troupe to boost their fellow soldiers\u2019 morale. His routines, which progress from lusty, macho singalongs to an elaborately conceptual drag act with self-made costumes, prove surprisingly popular with their peers and superiors: Before long, performance becomes his full-time military remit, with Pierre, initially roped in for technical assistance, among his supporting ensemble. Captured in floaty, powdery pastels that contrast sharply with the crisp, wheaten daylight in which Van den Eeden shoots most scenes, the performance sequences do feel like a suspension of reality for players and spectators alike, as the men respond with starved delight to Francis\u2019 dainty burlesque of womanhood.<\/p>\n

\n\tPierre, though, is entranced by Francis himself, and the feeling is mutual: Dhont patiently teases their attraction through the full gamut of glances, from darting to yearning, though it can be hard to tell what is desire and what is merely heated physical proximity in this environment of constantly distorted, misdirected machismo. A genuinely swooning first kiss, though, shot with rapt, blissed-out, time-stopping intensity, is among the most purely romantic gestures the movies have seen in a minute \u2014 and from here on out, \u201cCoward\u201d blossoms as a love story of marked tenderness, but with a queasy, nervy undertow, as we wonder if it can possibly survive the brutality of war, and of men in general.<\/p>\n

\n\tIt works in large part because Macchia \u2014 a gently stoic, aptly unformed presence with a stolid sadness in his trudging gait, who can go from boy to man with a slight shift in the light \u2014 and the far more vocal, focus-pulling Campagne have chemistry visible almost entirely in the different ways their bodies move and balance each other: one still, one quicksilver; one molded by the men around him, one brazenly opposing that physicality. Dhont has a rich, tactile sense of how men \u2014 queer men especially, but not exclusively \u2014 watch other men, and \u201cCoward,\u201d by turns breathtakingly violent and sweetly, shiveringly sensual, thrives on that understanding, encouraging audiences to share in its pleasure.<\/p>\n

Read more How \u2018Fallout,\u2019 \u2018Chad Powers and \u2018Stranger Things\u2019 Makeup and VFX Artists Went all in on Prosthetics and Transformations<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n

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\t\t\u2018Coward\u2019 Review: Lukas Dhont Brings His Signature Aching Sensuality to the War-is-Hell Genre, and Makes His Most Satisfying Film to Date<\/p>\n<\/h2>\n

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\t\tReviewed at Cannes Film Festival (Competition), May 21, 2026. Running time: 125 MIN.<\/p>\n<\/h2>\n

    \n
  • \nProduction:<\/strong>
    \n(Belgium-France-Netherlands) A The Reunion production in co-production with Versus Production, Topkapi Films, Lumen. (World sales: The Match Factory, Cologne.) Producers: Michiel Dhont, Juliette Schrameck.\t\t\t<\/li>\n
  • \nCrew:<\/strong>
    \nDirector: Lukas Dhont. Camera: Dhont, Angelo Tijssens. Camera: Frank van den Eeden. Editor: Alain Dessauvage. Music: Valentin Hadjadj.\t\t\t<\/li>\n
  • \nWith:<\/strong>
    \nEmmanuel Macchia, Valentin Campagne, Jonas Wertz. (French, Dutch dialogue) \t\t\t<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Lukas Dhont’s third feature ‘Coward’ gracefully finding love in the most hopeless of places \u2014 the desolate battlefields of the First World War.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":446,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[3,476,477],"class_list":["post-447","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-film","tag-cannes-film-festival","tag-coward","tag-lukas-dhont"],"yoast_head":"\n\u2018Coward\u2019 Review: Lukas Dhont Brings His Signature Aching Sensuality to the War-is-Hell Genre, and Makes His Most Satisfying Film to Date - Relocation Observer<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/relocationobserver.com\/?p=447\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"\u2018Coward\u2019 Review: Lukas Dhont Brings His Signature Aching Sensuality to the War-is-Hell Genre, and Makes His Most Satisfying Film to Date - 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