‘Coward’ Review: Lukas Dhont’s Phony Queer World War I Love Story

With his first two features, Girl and Close, Lukas Dhont carved out a reputation for piercing examinations of the minefield for children and adolescents of sexual and gender identity, whether internalized or in relation to the outside world. Both films drew acclaim, but also detractors who bristled at the Belgian director’s perceived exploitation of subjects as sensitive as gender dysphoria, self-harm and suicide for the purposes of emotional manipulation. I’ve landed somewhere down the middle of those two poles, until Coward, which reeks of manneristic affectation and phoniness.

One of the indisputable strengths of Dhont’s films has been his skillful handling of actors, especially young screen newcomers. That virtue is undermined here by leads with minimal chemistry, one of them inexpressive and the other archly theatrical, by design if not to rewarding effect. But what really sinks Coward is the self-conscious grandiosity with which the director strains for lofty emotional peaks in moments that instead come off as hollow and artificial.

The movie opens with a trainload of rookie Belgian soldiers heading for the front, their eagerness to dive into the fray and prove their valor hammered in a full-throated singalong (in French) to “Pack Up Your Troubles in Your Old Kit-Bag, and Smile, Smile, Smile.” The emphatic gusto of the soldiers’ singing, and the length for which Dhont lets it go on, plant the vague idea that the director could almost be aiming for the heightened passions of a musical. 

That impression is furthered when a group of soldiers who dub themselves “The Band of Rejects” are introduced, putting on light entertainment in makeshift female garb to entertain the boys behind the trenches and keep up morale. Every ditty they perform is amped up with maximum vehemence. 

Among the most notable is a patriotic anthem toward the end, bursting with fiery conviction, with troupe leader Francis (Valentin Campagne) waving a banner like he’s closing Act I of Gay Misérables. Full disclosure, lest anyone get the wrong idea: I’m in the club and partial to musicals, but it got to the point where I found myself wincing: “Oh no, another f**king song?”

The history of soldiers entertaining their comrades in cross-dressing performance troupes is well-documented, representing its own form of bravery and fighting spirit in macho military environments. One of Dhont’s key themes is that courage can be defined in countless ways, whether it’s crawling through muddy fields near enemy lines, choosing life at great personal cost or applying makeup and getting frocked up in dresses made of hessian sacks and parachute cloth.

Eighteen and unworldly, Pierre (Emmanuel Macchia) seems to have barely ever left the farm he grew up on before being drafted to serve in the Belgian army. Told on arrival at the front that rookies need to prove themselves, Pierre hurls himself into his duties, carrying heavy shells to the trenches and loading corpses from the battlefield onto carts. DP Frank van den Eeden’s camera gets in close on his face — as it does with the lead characters throughout the film — showing both the effort and the determination he puts into his tasks.

He’s generally quiet and reactive compared to most of the soldiers, who are full of shouty bragaddocio and raucous japes. But he forms the beginnings of a bond with a vulnerable chap who recently became a first-time father, his son born after he shipped out. 

Pierre’s first taste of Francis’ insouciant flamboyance comes when the latter is brought into the mess tent on a stretcher, a sheet covering his bulbous fake pregnant belly. Francis proceeds with an over-the-top childbirth pantomime that culminates in the new dad being egged on to cut the rope umbilical cord. Bellowing guffaws follow, though the antic is more insensitive than amusing. 

While he’s tall and physically sturdy, Pierre seems an uneasy fit amid all that bubbling testosterone. He appears to have moral qualms about the soldiers gathering around to pee in the buckets of soup being served to a truckload of German prisoners. But he participates anyway, clearly eager to belong.

Meanwhile, the flagrantly femme and brashly confident Francis keeps catching his eye and he soon talks Pierre into helping build a stage in a barn, where Francis and his fellow outsiders intend to put on shows for the boys. The attraction between them is subtly suggested at first, when Francis and the rest of the costumed troupe lead a coquettish “ladies’ choice” dance. But even Pierre’s embarrassment can’t hide what’s behind the intense eye contact.

And so it goes, slipping back and forth between repetitive trench warfare with lots of obligatory handheld jittery-cam and tender interludes such as Francis leading his chorus girls with a trembling falsetto on “Plaisir d’Amour,” which seals the deal for besotted Pierre and brings tears to the eyes of soldiers in the audience. (I bought this even less than I bought the central love story.) A first kiss follows soon after in the roof above the stage.

When one soldier is shot during his second attempt at desertion, Pierre’s willingness to keep returning to the line of fire weakens, and he deliberately injures his hand so he can stay away from the fighting. He becomes more involved with the performers, first in a backstage capacity, scattering snow from the roof, and eventually joining them on stage. But rather than full drag like the rest of them, his costumes are more like variations on a Pierrot theme.

Neither Pierre nor Francis has actual experience of sex, and even when they have the privacy of a bedroom while traveling to perform at a hospital, the physical side of the relationship barely goes beyond kissing. Heated Rivalry, this isn’t.

Dhont works hard at pumping up the tragic dimensions of a love story forced to exist in secret, but I found this movie obstinately unaffecting. Francis wants the war never to end so he can hold on to whatever freedom they have found together, while Pierre becomes the romantic, daydreaming about running off to live in a cabin in the mountains. Brokeback, maybe?

Despite this being “The Great War,” there seldom seem to be more than 20 or 30 people involved; the scale of the production looks cramped. And even with depictions of bloodshed and death, the drama’s conflicts are a little soft. 

There’s a whiff of homophobia in one soldier sneering at Pierre, saying, “Go dance while we die.” And an officer reacts with hostility, calling them a “bunch of degenerates” when his friskiness with Francis during a performance causes Pierre to intervene. But those and other threats to raise the dramatic temperature tend to fizzle out before they go anywhere. Even the semi-open, potentially happy ending feels prosaic because neither the director nor the actors have convinced us to invest much in that outcome. 

Macchia sticks predominantly to the same note of moony adoration while Campagne seems to be in a contest with himself as to whether he can make Francis more annoying in or out of drag. 

There have been moving, far more textured films about the anxieties and dangers of being a gay man in the military in recent years, like Oliver Hermanus’ Moffie or Elegance Bratton’s The Inspection. And WWI serves as the wrenching force that curtails a resonant queer love story in last year’s The History of Sound, also directed by Hermanus. 

In Coward (BTW, is Dhont ever going to upgrade to a two-word title?), war is mostly the backdrop for a reflection on courage that just sits there, never building much dramatic heft. Everything about the film is fussy, from the direction to the lighting and camerawork to the chiming score. It’s all so studied and lacking in teeth that it lurches into melodrama.