Holy Cow review - perfectly pitched coming-of-age tale in rural France

Director Louise Courvoisier has put herself firmly on the film map with this story of young Totone and his little sister, carving out a living in the modern-day Jura countryside after being orphaned. Think the Dardennes brothers with more sunshine and less angst, a way of life where young calves are transported to market n the front seat of the family car.

Courvoisier is from the village featured and cast her film from the locals working there. All are amateurs, all are naturals. Her Totone is a poultry farm worker, Clément Faveau, an 18-year-old with the ruddy cheeks and telltale half-tanned arms of the outdoor labourer. When we first meet him he is dancing on a raised platform at a village dance, being egged on by his mates to strip. Which he duly does. He leaves the party totally drunk with a woman who turns him out of her bed at dawn, before her mother gets up. He has failed to perform, possibly out of tiredness as well as excess booze. Now he has to be picked up by his father to go on milk-collecting rounds. “Do you want to vomit?” is all his father need say to indicate his fatherly concern and total understanding of his son.

Totone’s dissolute teenage life is cut short when his father dies, leaving him to care for his much younger sister Claire (Luna Garret), a little girl with the solemn face and striking outsize eyes of an ancient wise woman. The relationship between her and Totone is touchingly caring. He’s a punk kid, but one with a tender heart. His friends, especially Francis (Dimitry Baudry), a stock-car racing nut whom we see readying a custom car for a big race, are equally nurturing, assisting him in his quest to make his own Comté cheese  (pictured above, behind Clément Faveau) for a contest with a big cash prize and making big sacrifices along the way. 

The cheesemaking is as fascinating as anything else in the film Totone uses po-faced how-to videos online, full of happy locals in historic costumes, plus the experience he gains in a brief stint at a local cheesemaking plant, to create his own wheel of cheese. His friends lampoon the old copper vat he polishes up to warm his milk in as “Obélix stuff”, but he is indefatigable, rustling the milk, quizzing the lady cheese-making demonstrator (a local prison guard in real life) at a local farm about her technique and constructing from scratch a pulley system for lifting out the muslin bag of curds. 

The film is being described as feelgood, but it is no soft-centred fairytale, where Totone triumphs over the odds to a resounding victory. It doesn’t make a meal of his hardships any more than he does, but it is sage and unsentimental about the lives of people like him and his mates. They have to learn how to drink and dance and still be able to get up at 4am the next day to milk their herd or collect other farmers’ output. They become tough-minded people who internalise their emotions and drive hard bargains with each other.

Totone’s liaison with a local farmer, Marie-Lise (Maïwène Barthélémy, pictured below with Clément Faveau), is typically no-nonsense. She instructs him in how to connect the hose that transfers the milk without getting covered in spray, how to assist a cow in labour and, not least, how to perform oral sex when his libido is still en panne,.Any hardship in this lifestyle is mitigated by the beauty unearthed by Courvoisier’s film-making, which winds through early morning mists down country lanes with its subjects. A soundtrack by Courvoisier’s brother Charlie and mother Linda, classical musicians before they became farmers, adds an almost tribal vibe to these scenes with its unison humming voices, underpinned by a solo cello. This landscape isn’t romanticised, even though it may show wide open spaces where wild palominos canter away at the camera’s approach. It’s not a glamorous idyll, it’s folksy, almost like a western, with "Kisses Sweeter than Wine” also popping on the soundtrack. 

Courvoisier’s cast are her crowning achievement, each one an ideal choice. Faveau has the insouciant charm of a young man growing up fast, his slight pout softening when he smiles, some of his youthful innocence still in play. His friends, despite their devil-may-care behaviour, are equally sound allies in extremis. As Totone’s love interest, Barthélémy (an agriculture student) is a gift, a hint of hardness in her face but a sense of humour in her attitude as she roars around on her quad-bike. Most captivating of all is young Luna Garret as Claire, the quiet boss of them all, calm and capable. It’s a film that doesn’t give up on insisting on life’s possibilities, even as they seem to be seeping away. 

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