Critic Reviews

It’s Dhont at his most tender and his most mature, crafting a stunning piece of work and one of the best films of the year, of any year.

Above all, it’s a sensitive piece of storytelling that reaches a place of hopefulness, not in light of the tough subject matter of war, but in spite of it.

Unlike other period tales of hidden queer love, including one that debuted at this same festival a year ago, Dhont isn’t interested in dripping his canvas in tragedy. He’s going to leave you with a glimmer of hope. Actually, more than a glimmer. A wry smile of anticipation that suggests all isn’t lost and love can find a way.

Dhont has a tactile, compassionate sense of how men — queer men especially, but not exclusively — watch other men, and Coward, by turns breathtakingly violent and sweetly, shiveringly sensual, thrives on that understanding, encouraging audiences to share in its pleasure.

It plays as an oral, musical history, rich in period research and detail, laying out its narrative and thematic concerns early and never really moving beyond them.

As a war movie, Coward isn’t especially unique. Nor is it as a queer romance. But how many straight wartime love stories have we seen? This is a lovely, if rather decorous and reverent, tale of an illicit affair that’s unlikely to cause as much noise as Dhont’s last two films. But in this case, that should actually work to its benefit.

Exhibiting an emotional restraint sometimes missing from his previous films Girl (2018) and Close (2022), Dhont’s latest proves to be an affecting, familiar drama.

Most powerfully, Dhont stages a recuperation of queer representation as both resilient and hopeful. Happiness, or perhaps more importantly, contentment, is possible when you seek it and seize it.

There is much that is valuable and interesting in this movie, although it is a little predictable in what it has to say and how it says it, though Campagne and Macchia give committed performances as secret lovers in the shadow of war.

Coward is sweetly played and elegantly mounted but there’s little here that really surprises.