It breaks my heart to confess that Lukas Dhont‘s emotionally flamboyant Coward, set primarily in the horrific slaughterhouse of World War I trench warfare, has struck me as highly disturbing, disorienting and saddening.

A queer romance set amidst the musical drag performances that took place behind the Belgian lines during the war, and more particularly about a profound attraction between closeted farm boy Pierre (Emmanuel Macchia) and son-of-a-tailor Francis (Valentin Campagne), a brazenly effeminate performer who leads the popular troupe of drag entertainers, whom Francis addresses as “ladies”…hold on, losing the thread.

For their spirit-lifting funhouse antics, offering a much-needed respite from the blood, mud and death of the front lines, Francis and his fellow performers are celebrated by the troops (only one or two convey homophobic spite) and, a bit curiously, by their uniformed Belgian commanders.

In his 5.21 review, Screen Daily‘s Tim Grierson, a Coward fan, admits that this reaction “probably runs counter to most viewers’ assumption about how such outrageousness would have been perceived during that era.” Do ya think so, Tim?

For as well crafted and sumptuously mounted as Coward obviously is, it’s a florid swing away from the understated poignance and powerful, less-is-more restraint that characterized Dhont’s first two queer love stories, Girl (’18) and Close (’22), both of which I was deeply moved by, especially by the latter.

After catching Girl at a Manhattan screening in December 2018, I described it as “the most assured, immersive and delicately effective drama about a transgender person that I’ve ever seen in my life, or am likely to see in the future”. Three and a half years later I became an even bigger fan of Dhont’s sophomore effort, a tragic teenaged love story that I called “a devastating grand slam” after seeing it in Cannes in May 2022.

Cut to last night’s 10:15 press screening of Coward in the Salle Debussy, and my agonized, seat-shifting, watch-checking response. For Coward is basically a gay fantasia by way of (in my head at least) Stanley Kubrick‘s Paths of Glory — it’s Ralph Meeker‘s Corporal Philippe Paris meets Ryan Murphy‘s Glee meets Ru Paul’s Drag Race meets Ken Russell‘s The Boyfriend meets Mel Brooks’ “The French Mistake”.

Hollywood Reporter‘s David Rooney: “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.”

Even from my limited fourth-row perspective, I noticed three or four walk-outs during the film’s final third. If you had told me before Coward began that seasoned journos would bail on a film by the obviously gifted Lukas Dhont, I would have been repulsed. But when I saw this with my own two eyes, I half-sympathized.

I was very upset (i.e., expressing myself in a less measured way) when I texted the following just after the screening:

“The Lukas Dhont [film] is a massive, appalling miscalculation — an embarrassing (to me) fiasco in which the bloody horror of World War I trench warfare is subsumed to what amounts to an opulent gay fantasia — a heartfelt, openly sexual love story that not only feels forced and fanciful, but one that dishonors the slaughterhouse realm of that awful war.”

Yes, this sounds like an old-fogeyish response but c’mon, man — I was there, taking it all in, and going “no, no, no” and asking myself “good God, what is this?”

Yes, there was that musical drag show that the Bridge of the River Kwai POWs put on for the troops as William Holden and Geoffrey Horne laid mines around the base of the Kwai bridge, but this? Harumphy patriarchal attitudes about flamboyant queerness surely ruled the roost 110 years ago, and I simply don’t believe that cheers and laughter among all (or even a significant majority) of the Belgian soldiers would have prevailed. Woke presentism has once again reared its head.

Imagine if Pierre and Francis had to submerge their feelings out of the usual old-school concerns. That would have been much more effective. Imagine if Francis didn’t behave like one of Ru Paul’s guests in each and every scene. “Over the top” doesn’t begin to describe his behavior. I felt heartened by a battlefield scene that shows Francis wounded and bloody and crying out “all is lost!” Thank God, I excitedly said to myself — at least this little creep is out of the film. But he’s back in the pink a few minutes later. My heart sank.

In the third act Francis confides to Pierre that he’s actually happy to be in the war realm because at least they can be together when none of their fellow soldiers is looking. Back in the normal civilized world they couldn’t be this expressive, he reasons. Fair enough, but I didn’t believe in their time-off, stolen-kisses moments for a second.

Coward not only condones Pierre’s cowardice (he stabs himself in the hand in order to avoid front-line duty) but cuts him a break when he deserts. None of those Matt Damon-ish feelings of fraternity with his fellow grunts for him! And then Dhont goes the extra mile by granting Pierre and Francis a happy epilogue finale.

Continuing text: “As someone who’s met and personally likes and admires Dhont and who respects the exquisitely refined Girl and Close, I’m in shock that he decided against applying his usual restraint by going with a campy, over-baked Ken Russell aesthetic (one particular Coward performance sequence reminded me of portions of Lisztomania and the grotesque birth-of-Venus opening of The Devils).

“Coward is one of the most absurd, wildly miscalculated misfires of all time. Poor Lukas, who remains a gifted filmaker and who will move on to another project and then another and another, has grotesquely overplayed his hand. It’s not the end of the world and the sun will come up tomorrow, but as far as this grumpy horse is concerned, ‘welcome to the WWI gay follies!’ didn’t settle in with any degree of acceptance or comfort.”

Over the last nine or ten days (5.12 to 5.21) I’ve seen more Cannes ’26 films than the ones I’ve written about. On paper HE’s policy has mostly been to hit the keyboard only about films that I’ve had strongly positive or negative reactions to, but I haven’t followed this regimen strictly.

But the biggies so far are, in this order, Fjord, Fatherland, The Man I Love, Paper Tiger, The Beloved, The Match and (in my estimation at least) Parallel Tales. Seven in all. Plus one high-expectation effort I’ll be seeing tonight, Coward, from Lukas Dhont.

There was one film — Pierre Salavdori‘s The Electric Kiss, which I caught on opening night (5.12) — that I wrote about without any special ardor or disfavor.

I felt generally positive about Kantemir Balagov‘s Butterfly Jam, and said as much.

I adored Juan Cabral and Santiago Franco‘s The Match. I comme ci comme ca‘ed about Charline Bourgeois-Tacquet‘s A Woman’s Life so I wrote nothing. I hated Jane Schoenbrun‘s Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, and said as much. I saw Diego Luna‘s Ashes and felt next to nothing…couldn’t get it up so I let it go.

And then, two days after the festival began or on Thursday, 5.14, I saw the first masterpiece — Pawel Pawlikowski‘s Fatherland, I filed a rave review, and liked it so much that I caught a repeat showing the following morning (Friday, 5.15).

My approving response to Asghar Farhadi‘s Parallel Tales was a minority opinion, but I found it genuinely clever and intriguing and said so.

Radu Jude‘s The Diary of a Chambermaid wasn’t a negative, but for filing purposes a no-go. Somewhere between flat and unexceptional.

On Friday (5.15) I described Ryusuke Hamaguchi‘s All Of a Sudden (Soudain) as “a 196-minute film that is basically a slow-moving, didactic conversational instructional — a 21st Century counterpart to Jean-Luc Godard‘s Marxist instructional films (1967 to 1974).”

Later that day I endured Marie Kreutzer‘s Gentle Monster, but it seemed like another generically feminist “awful men” flick, this one concerned with a husband who’s been secretly earning extra income by sharing child-porn material. This comes to his wife’s attention via police investigation, but I didn’t find it dramatically persuasive, much less compelling.

The festival’s second big knockout, Rodrigo Sorogoyen‘s The Beloved, arrived on Saturday, 5.16. Javier Bardem‘s performance as a vaguely testy, emotionally simmering film director coping with a difficult if unacknowledged relationship with his 30something actress daughter (the excellent Victoria Luengo) struck me as brilliant. The film was my idea of a solid triple.

Later that evening the third serious triumph screened — James Gray‘s Paper Tiger. I filed a seriously ardent rave with an idea that it might win the Palme d’Or, or at least the Grand Prix award.

Later that evening I composed a generally pleasured response to Barnaby Thompson‘s Maverick: The Epic Adventures of David Lean….”wowed, massaged, comforted, reminded, elevated, amused…a career-profile doc that does everything you want it to do.”

And then came the festival’s fourth heavy hitter as well as the first (and so far only) grand slam — Cristian Mungiu‘s Fjord, which I called “a fascinating assault on socially progressive totalitarianism.” This has to be a major award winner, in my view a Palme d’Or slam dunk. Then again the denial-beset reactions from certain critics indicated that the jury might take a similar view so who knows?

The dual disappointments of Andrey Zvyagintsev‘s Minotaur and Pedro Almodovar‘s Bitter Christmas arrived on Tuesday, 5.19. I was more impressed by the moaning man incident than the Almodovar…sorry.

I was fairly astounded by the flat tedium of Emmanuel Marre‘s Notre Salut, which certain French critics have been praising among themselves.

Yesterday (Wednesday, 5.20) ushered in Mike Mendez‘s entirely pleasant and nourishing Dernsie along with Ira Sach‘s The Man I Love, in my book the festival’s fifth knockout and another possible Palme d’Or winner…maybe.

The curtain goes up on Lukas Dhont‘s Coward this evening at 10:15 pm…great expectations.

That’s 18 or 19 films so far (I haven’t mentioned Garance and one other) with another three or four to go. These include Hope, Machine Gun Kelly, La Biola Negra and The Birthday Party.

Once again, the keepers are Fjord, Fatherland, The Man I Love, Paper Tiger, The Beloved, The Match and Parallel Tales.

HE’s Nice-to-Oslo flight leaves late Saturday afternoon. The Oslo-to-JFK departs just after noon on Sunday.