The BFI London Film Festival opened with Elsinore, screened Coward on the closing day and managed to include enough major LGBT films to equal the BFI LGBT Film Festival Flare. Belgian director Lukas Dhont’s Coward provided one of the high notes, continuing his earlier Close in 2022 with another sensual portrait of young lives testing life’s possibilities and boundaries. 

The setting is WW1 (1914–1919) and the mobilization of over 6 million young men, many of whom perished. Dhont does not gloss over or ignore the grim, hard reality of the war, although he uses this as the frame for the central focus of a journey towards love between two young men. Whereas Close looked at two young boys growing together but also growing apart, Coward homes in on a young man learning how to rise above the harsh realities of the world.

Dhont’s skill with actors involves lightness of touch, coaxing from Emmanuel Macchia as Pierre, physical movement and emotional moods of a gauche, gangly conscript, training for war but both ill at ease with life and the reality of warfare. The fear of death will provoke an act of cowardice that is the catalyst for a serious decision and the consequences.

Valentin Campagne is Francis, a flamboyant, effeminate young man fascinated by Pierre. Francis is one of a group of soldiers performing entertainment designed to alleviate the harsh fatigue of soldiers being trained to bring back the wounded and bodies of soldiers in the meat grinder of WW1 battle tactics. Dhont celebrates the camaraderie between soldiers with scenes involving communal pissing and nudity, although other acts of intimacy are more discreet and off the radar.

Dhont’s European lightness of touch and sense of humanity has the warmth of the great French filmmaker Jean Renoir, with awareness of space around interacting characters, whether it be the sawdust and tinsel of theatre or the grueling mud of trenches. Renoir’s war films were black and white while Dhont’s film unfolds scenes with soft painterly pastel colors. The film’s harmony between settings and characters is compelling, though far from the hard edge of Full Metal Jacket or Path to Glory in Kubrick’s war films. As with Renoir, Dhont is neither sentimental nor cynical, somewhere in between.

The set design includes cascading sawdust through a hole in the ceiling that Pierre lets fall over Francis while he performs on stage, signaling Pierre’s awakening interest in Francis. The costumes and uniforms look authentic, with a take-your-breath-away sequence in which Francis measures Pierre for a suit. The sense of Pierre’s body being touched through fabric is a fascinating parallel with Jack moving his hands over the shirt once worn by Ennis at the conclusion of Brokeback Mountain.

A rich and fascinating soundtrack with authentic period instrumentation recreates the texture of original early songs and music. This includes an old warhorse Pack Up Your Troubles sung here by boisterous soldiers. The actor Campagne’s untrained voice sings possibly the most soulful beautiful account of the classic 1784 French love song Plaisir D’amour, with mood recontextualized to mirror the secret vulnerable blossoming of love between both men. Coward remains no more a musical than Ira Sachs’ The Man I Love, with both seamlessly integrating song into real life. 

Dhon’t’s final scenes feel liberating and make for a rare film celebrating life in difficult times, set aside the darker visions of most other films involving warfare.  P.S. For their performances, Macchia and Campagne shared the Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Actor.

Mubi will release the film in movie theatres worldwide starting December 1st. Check your country HERE