War is what we’re talking about in this latest Cannes dispatch, which features three competition titles set either during World War I or II, and also in French (though one hails from Belgium). These films, however, do approach conflict from varying lenses, ranging from an absurdist character study to a conventional period drama to a queer romance.
Inspired by letters written by his great-grandparents, Emmanuel Marre’s “A Man of His Time” is a biting and sly historical comedy whose discomforting horrors are all too relevant. The punchline begins with the film’s very title, a double-edged sword that puns on its reverential meaning with a kind of cop-out (whenever someone is problematic, it’s often handwaved away by calling them “a man of their time”). It takes place during World War II, beginning in 1940, in Vichy, France, where Henri Marre (Swann Arlaud) attempts to sell his manuscript.
Henri is mostly unsuccessful. He isn’t a brilliant writer, a deep thinker, or a visionary. He moves with whatever faction or idea will get him noticed. In the film’s opening scene, for instance, Henri drunkenly floats around a party populated by people he doesn’t appear to know. Though he tries to strike up conversations, he offers such broad and obvious arguments—that Germany is dangerous and a threat to France—that few take note of his presence.
It doesn’t take long to realize that Henri’s words very rarely reflect the content of his soul, particularly when we’re introduced to the letters he sends to his wife and early champion Paulette (Sandrine Blancke). Those missives, which are narrated by Henri and Paulette, grant the film an epistolary quality that acutely tracks when Henri turns from being loving and principled to vain and submissive, a change that occurs when Henri is hired as a regional scout for the Office of Unemployment. In this role, Henri quickly becomes a bureaucratic pencil pusher adept at capitulating to power if it means career advancement, personal acknowledgment, or temporary safety. He also begins to espouse nationalistic posturing that aligns him with the German cause.
In every scene, Marre makes Henri look quite small. An arresting Arlaud body is perpetually crumpled up, agonizing over what decision, like what to do with the Jews the Germans are demanding, will offer him the path of least resistance. In that sense, “A Man of His Time” often recalls Armando Iannucci’s “The Death of Stalin,” though with more visual subtlety. Like Iannucci, Marre relies on winking crash zooms and cheeky blocking, which often show Henri hovering on the periphery of important people, like a fly that doesn’t have the good sense to know where to land. Arlaud is especially hilarious, mostly because he plays the hapless Henri with sincerity. Henri is a putz. And you don’t need to be outwardly funny for a smart audience to know they’re seeing a sideshow dumpster fire floating down the river. So, Arlaud confidently moves through scenes with unabashed confidence, while a lesser actor would play to the crowd.
The only component of “A Man of His Time” that doesn’t quite land is the anachronistic house music, which often recalls Paolo Sorrentino’s similarly politically minded “La grazia.” That temporally disorienting decision makes the “time” joke in the title too on the nose. Nevertheless, “A Man of His Time” is an alert work whose skewering of placating middlemen is especially urgent right now.
The other French-set World War II film is László Nemes’ far more classical narrative, “Moulin.” A brutal espionage picture that recalls Jean-Pierre Melville’s “Army of Shadows,” it concerns the harrowing imprisonment of the real-life head of the French Resistance, Jean Moulin (Gilles Lellouche), and the cruelty he faced at the hands of the Nazis. To be clear: comparing “Moulin” to Melville is more related to their shared narrative characteristics rather than their disparate quality. Jean mirrors the common Melville protagonist; he’s a stone-faced, quick-on-his-feet operator who works in the noirish shades of this wartime picture. Jean navigates his treacherous world undercover as a designer, which brings him into contact with the Countess of Forez (Louise Bourgoin), who’s quite smitten with this man of mystery.
Jean, however, is a cautious man. He possesses so many identities and knows so many safe harbors that even the Nazis aren’t sure what he looks like. That means that though any prospect of a romantic relationship with the Countess is remote, she isn’t repelled from his orbit. Despite his safeguards, Jean and many others from the Resistance are betrayed and arrested at a doctor’s office and imprisoned under the ruthless eye of Klaus Barbie (Lars Eidinger), a man whose barbaristic methods would be an insult to the word “torture.”
Running at a very long 130-minutes, “Moulin” doesn’t progress much beyond that set-up. It juxtaposes Jean’s valorous constitution with his captor’s violent impulsivity. Nemes’ camera doesn’t shy away from the viciousness inflicted on Jean, making viewers feel every blow hurled at him. He also attempts to add secondary characters, like Jean’s young cellmate, whose arc offers little beyond more on-screen torture.
“Moulin” is a patriotic film, a fact that eventually holds it back from wider aims. Melville’s stoics often reveal significant truths about the morals, habits, and failings of the people around them. “Moulin” is operating with significantly less interest, revealing very little that can’t be found in a history book, in the pursuit of offering up an unbreakable national hero whose martyrdom is rendered by Nemes using exacting yet cold and distant tools.
Set in 1916, Lukas Dhont’s “Coward,” a swooning queer wartime romance, might be his most conventional film to date. That isn’t to say that Dhont’s always been formally adventurous—he actually follows most genre conventions—but his prior work, like “Girl” and “Close,” has proven controversial for how it casts its adolescent transgender protagonist and handles its young gay subjects (I thought his idiotic “Close” was “Moonlight” nonsensically done from Kevin’s perspective). “Coward,” on the other hand, is about two adult Belgian soldiers in the throes of World War I. A strapping, chiseled Pierre (Emmanuel Macchia) arrives at the front with other new recruits boisterously singing patriotic songs, like “Pack Up Your Troubles in Your Old Kit-Bag.” These fresh-faced men who have been sold promises of gallantry and glory will soon discover that all that awaits them is mud and blood.
Pierre is a farmer by trade, and a sensitive Macchia plays him with wide-eyed curiosity and a certain kind of eagerness to fit in. Traveling with Pierre are several comrades, like Jacobs, a new father who’s been in the army so long he’s yet to see his 10-day-old child. Rather than charging into battle, Pierre and Jacobs’ duties involve carrying heavy shells through the front’s mire, throwing cartloads of deceased comrades into mass graves, and transporting the wounded from no man’s land back to their trenches during the brief armistices that occur. It’s a soul-draining existence that’s given reprieve when Pierre meets Francis (Valentin Campagne), an effeminate tailor, who, along with other artist-soldiers, is derided as a “reject” because they’re allowed to entertain rather than fight. To those ends, Francis has been tasked by his superiors with performing a cross-dressed burlesque show that eventually becomes a traveling company. Pierre becomes one of the stagehands.
Dhont’s script isn’t steeped in trauma, and Pierre and Francis’ aching relationship isn’t guided by the cliche of the conflicted “heterosexual” man cruising through queerness. Instead, it’s fascinated by the blurring boundaries between gays and the homosocial camaraderie of army life, and how the presence of both can allow many to freely negotiate their identity. We also discover that Pierre, whose masculinity is stereotypically rendered in his brooding presence, is actually quite comfortable with his sexuality, whereas Francis is fearful of the impossibility of their potential union. That tension, paired with Dhont’s vulnerable yet overly polished lens, gives each moment of passion gorgeous tenderness.
“Coward,” consequently, breaks the mold not in plotting but in its empathetic interest in its characters’ romantic souls, lending these men many small and seismic victories in the deep trenches of the heart.
