5 min readCannesMay 22, 2026 12:51 PM IST
Coward movie review: When you think of the war in the trenches during the first World War, the images that come to mind are that of mud trampled under a million boots, young soldiers hunkered down just below the enemy sightline in the cold and damp, never knowing when it will be their turn to die, the grim reaper never far away.
When the tall, silent Pierre (Emmanuel Macchia) arrives at a Belgian front, the war has been on for some time, even if it isn’t specifically mentioned. He learns, quickly enough, that flinching doesn’t help when the instruction — the ones ‘who are still breathing’ out first — when it comes to lifting bloody bodies out of trucks. But that doesn’t mean that he gets used to it, unlike so many others who get desensitized to the horrors that surround them.
Pierre finds himself drawn to Francis (Valentin Campagne), so different in his quick-silver, artistically-inclined ways from his (Pierre’s) rather stolid self. In one of their first exchanges, when you can see the them slowly getting aware to the fact of the other, they learn that Pierre is a farmer, and Francis, a tailor. And like so many other young men who find themselves plucked from their regular lives, pitchforked into an impossible situation, they learn to ways to unwind after each close shave: they paint, they play-act, they sing, and in all the drag-by-necessity performances, lose themselves, only if momentarily, to the terrible reality to the rain of blood and bones surrounding them. It is refreshing to see this all-male company chooses silliness as a pressure valve.
When the film moves away from the war zone itself, it becomes very much a Lukas Dhont film — a queer romance set during the backdrop of war — in the way it frames the two young men. Standing in the middle of the make-shift barracks, looking, really looking, at each other. Crawling into the loft-space where they come breath-close for their first kiss. On a stage from which Pierre sings a song of love and loss: his cheeks may be painted pink, but it’s no vaudeville, the sweet high-pitched melody makes many in the assembly tear up, from hardened war-horses to the newbies.
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The title is bald (Luke’s previous films ‘Girl’ ‘Close’ are all pointedly one word), but it gets tossed into the cauldron of young men brutally being picked up by gunfire — we never see the ‘Hun’, we only hear references to them — and gets into a churn. One soldier, who has just become a father, yearns to see his baby so much that his hold on reality starts slipping, and his final resting place is a shroud: is he a coward for wanting to leave the war-front, or is his desire to see his new-born so strong that he abandons all discipline that the Army drills into its recruits?
By now, Pierre has becomes so enamoured by Francis, that he hatches a plan to flee to the mountains. At this point, of course, it’s almost as if ‘Coward’ has entered familiar territory, becoming a cross between ‘All’s Quiet On The Western Front’ and ‘Brokeback Mountain’. Is Pierre a deserter because he fears for his life — a compatriot flings the term ‘coward’ in his face when Pierre makes too much of an injured hand — or does he want to hold on to the love of his life, and the only way it seems possible for that to happen, is to be far away from the trenches?
The film itself is ambivalent. Or at least that’s what it appears to be, in the way a soldier visiting his home, with Francis having worked for ‘cheap’ in the orchards for the past two years, recognises the runaway, crying out in anguish– you were not there. You turned your back on us, your comrades, you did not bear witness. Is he right, or wrong in judging Pierre ? It is to be noted that the word ‘coward’ doesn’t come up at this point.
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That a war can also create moments of startling beauty, in painting, and in theatre—both art-forms in scarce supply for soldiers battling the enemy — is the burden of Dhont’s film, performed by the two actors beautifully. There’s hardly anything in common between them, and yet when you see them lying next to each other, all you can see is a union that feels right. And in that there’s no ambivalence at all. It is as clear as day.
Coward movie cast: Emmanuel Macchia, Valentin Campagne
Coward movie director: Lukas Dhont
Coward movie rating: 3 stars
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