Coward Takes Cannes: Belgium Sends Its Bravest Film
The queer World War One drama took best acting honours at this year's festival for its two leads, Emmanuel Macchia and Valentin Campagne, and Belgium has now selected it as its submission for the International Feature Film race at the 99th Academy Awards.
There is a particular kind of film that arrives already carrying its verdict — the kind that wins at Cannes in a way that silences the room rather than fills it with applause. Lukas Dhont's *Coward* is that film. The queer World War One drama took best acting honours at this year's festival for its two leads, Emmanuel Macchia and Valentin Campagne, and Belgium has now selected it as its submission for the International Feature Film race at the 99th Academy Awards. Dhont, who built his reputation on *Close* — another film about boys and the distances between them — has apparently decided that restraint is not something he does twice. *Coward* sounds like the logical extension of everything he's been building toward: grief, masculinity, the war that keeps getting made into films because we still haven't understood it.
Meanwhile, the HBO Harry Potter series continues its pre-production chaos at a volume that would embarrass most productions mid-shoot. Kit Harington has replaced Nicholas Hoult as Professor Gilderoy Lockhart — which is, if you squint at it correctly, a fascinating piece of casting logic. Hoult has the bone structure for Lockhart's particular brand of decorative incompetence. Harington has the jaw. Whether Harington can do comedy is a question *Game of Thrones* never once asked him to answer, which is either a problem or an opportunity depending on how generous you're feeling toward HBO's ambitions for this thing. The series is already attracting the kind of pre-release drama that makes you wonder whether the production is cursed or simply very good at staying in the news cycle. Both are valid strategies.
Elsewhere: Michael Showalter is remaking *Serendipity* for Amazon MGM Studios and Miramax, which tells you everything you need to know about where the rom-com is right now — reaching back to 2001 for material because the genre forgot how to make new myths. Showalter directed *The Big Sick*, which was genuinely lovely, so there is reason to believe this will be more than a nostalgia exercise. There is also reason to remain cautious, because nostalgia is a very comfortable trap and Amazon has a budget large enough to make the trap look beautiful.
The only verdict that matters this week belongs to Dhont. *Coward* has already won. The Oscars will decide whether they agree.
