Coward
A war film as only Lukas Dhont (Girl, Close) could have made it: sensual and tender. During the First World War, a young soldier discovers a world of theatre, music and tenderness behind the front line. Award-winning at Cannes.
The opening scenes of Lukas Dhont’s extraordinary third feature introduce an array of newly minted Belgian soldiers in 1916. Like so many young men of the era, they initially approach the front lines not with a feeling of anxiety but a spirit of excitement and freshly forged camaraderie. Of course, the characters of Coward soon wake up to the First World War’s many horrors. Yet, traces of that brighter energy still persist in the uncommonly poignant love story at the film’s centre.
Among those new arrivals in the trenches is Pierre (Emmanuel Macchia), a taciturn farmboy who’s mostly content to blend into the background of his troop. That makes him very different from Francis (Valentin Campagne), the son of a tailor and the enthusiastic lead performer in the ad hoc revues that the most theatrically inclined soldiers stage for their comrades as a welcome distraction. The spark of attraction between the two men leads to another means of escaping the misery and tragedy that surrounds them.
Macchia and Campagne were the very deserving recipients of Best Actor honours from the jury when the film premiered at the Cannes Film Festival. Coward also marks a triumph for Dhont, who makes the shift to the much larger scale of a period drama without losing the sense of intimacy, specificity, and humanity that distinguished his prior work. (source: www.tiff.net)