Écran Large is back on the Croisette for the Cannes Film Festival 2026. And it’s time to revisit Coward, Lukas Dhont’s return to competition (Girl, Close).
Is Lukas Dhont becoming the new Xavier Dolan? At only 34, and with three feature films under his belt, the Belgian director has become a major name in auteur cinema, after winning the Camera d’Or (Cannes’ prize for first films) for Girl and the Grand Prix for Close.
Coward extends his kinetic, live-wire style and his reflections on gender identity, this time set against the backdrop of World War I… and the limits of the director begin to show more clearly.
The Great Gay War
What is it about? A young Belgian soldier named Pierre wants to prove himself on the front during World War I. Behind the lines, he meets Francis, responsible for lifting the troops’ morale.
And is it any good? Dhont’s cinema has obvious strengths. The decisive quality of his direction, kept close to his performers and their gestures, can translate a tender sensuality, even guiding us to the heartbeats and the breath of the characters through their tremors. That’s what grips in the opening stretch of Coward, where Pierre, a young Belgian soldier, discovers the horror of war as he must evacuate the wounded from the battlefield.
Fixed on him and his lost gaze, the camera finds itself plunged into this double impulse of life and death, especially during scenes of moving bodies through grimy mass graves. For Pierre, the counterpoint to this deadly routine lies with Francis, an actor and director of a theater troupe, a rare enchanted interlude since the nightmare that is the Great War.
From there emerges a long-awaited, melodramatic queer romance, buoyed by a historical and military backdrop that stamps its impossibility. Nothing terribly new under the sun, except for one idea (the film’s best): in this warlike, virile crowd, the army becomes its own micro-society, unable to ignore the presence of the feminine, though that presence is absent from the trenches. Francis cross-dresses for his performances and embodies this gender fluidity, not so much through androgyny as through metaphorical hermaphroditism (we see him simulate childbirth during a meal).
Bodies adapt to sustain the species, and in doing so rekindle a sensibility that few allow themselves. Paradoxically, the chaos of war offers Pierre and Francis a chance to be whole, to the point that they wish to remain stuck in these four years of hell. Nevertheless, these narrative detours do not prevent Coward from hammering home obvious points, and from growing tiresome despite the originality of its setting.
Emmanuel Macchia and Valentin Campagne’s emotional investment helps carry some beautiful scenes of closeness and interlocking bodies, but Lukas Dhont doesn’t seem to trust enough in the power of his actors and imagery. It mirrors one of the recurring motifs of this Cannes competition, a lineup dampened by talky films that cannot help but verbalize their intent, overexplain their thoughts, and try to forge ambiguities that can’t stay ambiguous.
There are nonetheless plenty of moments that leak through this masculine approach to the collective, notably in scenes of singing that say more than the melancholic, poetry-spattered lines Dhont leans on, until a final sequence that could have gained in impact by staying silent. Close already suffered from the same flaw, waiting behind its tears and the soggy strands of mucus for a straightforward finish: the protagonist saying “sorry.” You can sense that Coward could have been a grand queer, anti-war film, but the narrative and aesthetic limits of its director frustrate more than ever.
And when is it coming out? The film does not yet have a French release date, but it will be distributed by Diaphana.
