I’m old enough to remember when every trip to the cinema involved not a barrage of adverts for mobile phones but a ten-fifteen minute short, usually a documentary on a subject of almost parodic dullness, like ‘cheese-making in France’. Louise Courvoisier’s debut Holy Cow takes that concept and runs with it, but the result is far from dull. Instead, what we get is a moving and humorous coming-of-age story which is told with brio, avoiding the usual divots of social realism misery.
Totone (Clément Faveau) is a teenager, whose summer is full of fêtes, fights and hangovers until a sudden tragedy leaves him alone with his young sister (a phenomenally cute Luna Garret), and all the responsibility as the head of the house. Neighbours offer help but their offers are soon revealed to either be empty or compromised by Totone’s feud with the sons of another cheesemaker. His solution is to try to win a cheese-making competition which will pocket him 30,000 euros, with the help of his stock-car driving chums. There will be missteps and acrimony and an unsentimental romance that smells of dung and sex with Marie-Lise (Maïwenn Barthelemy), a much more capable young woman from a neighbouring farm and from whom he’ll learn self-discipline and cunnilingus.
It’s a summer film of late nights and early mornings
Holy Cow is set in the agricultural region of Jura, home of the Comté cheese which Totone is trying to make – and you can tell that the director is a local. Despite Elio Balezeaux’s gorgeous cinematography, Courvoisier’s view of the countryside is no postcard view. She knows the grass is green because of the wealth of cow muck and that this beauty is also a working place of lorries and early mornings, alcoholism and animals born in blood and straw. Adults are almost entirely absent – anyone waiting for social services to swoop in can rest easy/worry. For better and for worse, the kids have got to fend for themselves and ultimately, Totone – following Marie-Lise’s lead – has to grow up.
Holy Cow is a summer film of late nights and early mornings. And there’s even something of the child’s fantasy wrapped in the nightmare of losing a parent. In contrast, in making the film, Courvoisier employed her own family, who took on everything from the set design to the beautifully atmospheric, yet lightly applied soundtrack. During a cheese tasting, a connoisseur describes a cheese as inedible, before explaining that it’s too young but has promising attributes. Courvoisier’s film is both young and, I imagine, delicious on crackers.
In UK and Ireland cinemas April 11.