Holy Cow review – warmhearted story of smalltown teen turned champion cheesemaker
It doesn't get more French than a drama about cheese. Holy Cow is the feature debut from director (and part-time farmer) Louise Courvoisier; it's a social-realist drama that is the opposite of grim and miserable in its warm and often funny telling of a coming-of-age story about a teenager from a struggling family of comté-makers in the remote region of Jura. Courvoisier warms things up nicely with her idealism and optimism, and she gets brilliant performances from her non-professional cast, cows included. The opening scene features a calf sitting in the driver's seat of a car staring out of the window.
Newcomer Clément Faveau (a poultry farmer in real-life) plays 18-year-old Totone, first shown at a country fair so drunk that he jumps on a table and strips naked. Totone lives with his dad, a cheesemaker who drinks heavily, and his wise seven-year-old sister; no one ever mentions a mum. Totone gets small-town kicks with his mates, riding around on mopeds getting drunk, until something awful happens. Left alone to look after his sister, Totone comes up with a daft get-rich-quick scheme to make €30,000 in a comté competition. How hard can it be to knock out a prize-winning wheel?
Faveau gives an amazingly subtle performance; Totone doesn't say much but his fragility and complexity are all there, humour too in the little shrug of a shoulder. Also terrific is Maïwene Barthelemy, as a teenage dairy farmer Totone falls in love with – and steals from. In what might be the most tender line of the film, she tells Totone, not unkindly: 'Stop snivelling and pull your finger out.' Holy Cow is sentimental in the best of ways, with its warmth and hope in human nature. After watching the intensive labour of the cheese-making scenes you may also complain less about handing over a fiver for a little chunk of comté.
Holy Cow shows at UK and Irish cinemas from 11 April.
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