Critics reviews

There’s electricity between [the film's two leads], bolstered by the intoxicating chemistry between Macchia and Campagne, who the camera feels drawn to as much as they feel the pull of one another.

Campagne and Macchia lead the film like a waltz we’ve waited so long to cheer on. Coward sees Dhont adapting to period filmmaking while maintaining what he does best as a writer-director: slice open the emotional enclosure in which his characters try to hide.

Another gently moving exploration of young men clutching onto their sense of self in traumatic circumstances... Coward is not a film about homophobia in the military... and it’s not a conventional war film either.

In Coward, Lukas Dhont uses beauty to offer a form of resistance against the ugliness of the world... Beauty lies at the heart of the story just as it lies at the heart of the shots, in the way Lukas Dhont captures the fragile yet impetuous youth of his protagonists, the lightness of a song, or the grace of a first embrace.

This story of a gay affair in the army is heartfelt and well acted, if rather earnestly researched... There is much that is valuable and interesting in [Coward], 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 a YA wartime romance made with an adult sensibility and sensitivity.. 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.

From the moment [Emmanuel Macchia and Valentin Campagne] meet on screen, there is something genuinely electric between their eyes. And you simply can’t ignore it.

An affecting, familiar drama... [Coward] follows the expected narrative beats of the repressed love story, although the two leads exude such a vulnerable, genuine rapport that it offsets the script’s potential predictability.

[Coward] benefits from the restraint Dhont shows, and it feels like promising evidence that he’s growing as a storyteller, able to pull off emotional arcs without relentlessly punishing his characters for them.

[Coward is] 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. With each new story, he’s finding deeper crevices to explore with gender and sexuality of queer and not-so-queer spaces and, dare I say, a bit of hope.

Lukas Dhont in his brief filmography has proven to be a filmmaker whose eye is on people and what makes us who we are. That is a rare talent, much needed in these daunting times. Coward may be a story taking place in war, but it is set firmly in the human heart.

It's always a joy to encounter unashamedly sincere films that are so emotionally uplifting in their depiction of pure love and pure human connection... [Coward is an] exceptional gay romance worth discovering.