Pierre (Emmanuel Macchia) is our focal point and sensitive hero. He falls hesitantly in love with Francis (Valentin Campagne), a halting romance that’s portrayed carefully by the two actors, as if to suggest that the two young men, driven by impulse and circumstance, don’t quite fully comprehend what’s happening to them in their shared process of falling for one another. This seems like a realistic move to me. Homosexual though they might be, many soldiers worldwide found themselves in such situations throughout the 20th century, particularly in WWI and WWII, when the wars took them away from often rural homescapes and towards their close encounters with each others in cities and ports all around the world. Some gay male historians have even posited that WWII set the very notion of gay male identity into motion in that way, hence the popular notion of gay and bisexual (and straight and curious) sailors who’d come ashore and gather in what came to be among the first gay bars and clubs in many locations globally.
Our hope for everything to work out fine for Pierre and Francis, despite the mass deaths and daily upheavals that surround them as soldiers in wartime, is mainly what drives the film and maintains the audience’s interest. They share a folded note with a simple line-drawing of a mountain where they plan to meet and shack up together in seclusion (either after the war has ended or after they both go AWOL), in a clear-eyed nod to Jack Twist and Ennis Del Mar in Ang Lee’s Brokeback Mountain. That encompassing focus on the relationship between Pierre and Francis in Coward highlights the deep strengths of both actors’ performances, while also drawing attention to some slight awkwardness in the characterizations at time, as though the actors (who might as well have previously been models) aren’t always totally certain how to telegraph certain emotional responses. I felt that same awkwardness a bit in Lukas Dhont’s previous film, Close, though the youth of the two actors in that film as young boys may have added more obviously to that very uncertainty. Perhaps it’s a very minor directorial glitch, or perhaps it lies wholly on the acting side. I even wonder if there’s something about masculinity and gay life in Belgian culture that I’m just unfamiliar with, which I’m reading as awkwardness on occasion? A discomfort with being gay in earlier historical periods is what gets underscored, even if that potentially stereotypical stance is presented with plenty of self-awareness and mostly with artistic prowess, both in Coward and in Close.
What sets Lukas Dhont’s films apart is how they very deliberate approach themes of masculinity (and broken masculinity) with a true sense of revelatory care. Male bodies are filmed with a tenderness and aesthetic investment in his movies, which very few of his contemporaries can achieve. Coward most brought to mind Claire Denis’ masterpiece Beau Travail, for instance, a comparison which makes it clear that Lukas Dhont is in it for the seriousness of the cinematic and directorial game, and at just age 35 now, he’s also clearly in it for the long haul.
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