5 min readCannesMay 22, 2026 12:51 PM IST Coward movie review: When you think of the war in the trenches during the first World War, the images that come to mind are that of mud trampled under a million boots, young soldiers hunkered down just below the enemy sightline in the cold and damp, never knowing when it will be their turn to die, the grim reaper never far away. When the tall, silent Pierre (Emmanuel Macchia) arrives at a Belgian front, the war has been on for some time, even if it isn’t specifically mentioned. He learns, quickly enough, that flinching doesn’t help when the instruction — the ones ‘who are still breathing’ out first — when it comes to lifting bloody bodies out of trucks. But that doesn’t mean that he gets used to it, unlike so many others who get desensitized to the horrors that surround them. Pierre finds himself drawn to Francis (Valentin Campagne), so different in his quick-silver, artistically-inclined ways from his (Pierre’s) rather stolid self. In one of their …