Holy Cow! A Portrayal of Youth on Screen

Louise Courvoisier’s feature film debut, ‘Holy Cow’, is a love letter to the French countryside and the communities that reside within it. Having won the Youth Prize at Cannes Film Festival, the film is receiving glowing reviews. Growing up in Cressia, a French commune in the Jura department in Bourgogne-Franche-Comté, Courvoisier clearly draws from a lot of her own experience and love for these parts of France. This personal aspect and it being shot on location makes ‘Holy Cow’ come alive.

The film tells the story of Totone (Clément Faveau), an 18-year-old boy who after unexpectedly losing his father must quickly take on more responsibilities such as looking after his younger sister and taking over his father’s cheese dairy. When Totone realises he needs to make money, and fast, he decides to try to win the €30,000 prize for the best Comté cheese, gathering his sister and friends to help. This coming-of-age story goes on a beautiful journey of self-discovery, his ambition leading him down a path of petty theft, forcing him to confront the realities of hard work and responsibility, mirroring the intricate and patient process of cheesemaking itself.

The choice to use non-professional actors, the casting directors having travelled to agricultural shows and stock car races, really shines through as a positive choice. The awkwardness of those teenage years is played beautifully through these actors, their lack of acting credits working for them rather than against. Alongside this, the cinematography displays a sense of warmth that feels immersive and genuine. It does a great job at displaying the playfulness of youth on screen; the film starting out with a drunk Totone stripping off all his clothes as his friend’s gleefully chant.

Totone’s relationship with Marie-Lise (Maiwene Barthelemy) serves as a beautiful insight into those first romantic and sexual encounters. Scenes between them are both intimate and gentle, their performances extending past dialogue, communicated through glances and the brush of a hand. These relationships are what drives the film, the importance of community being a key theme throughout.

‘Holy Cow’ starts off with a tracking shot, as we follow an older man walking through one of the many community gatherings we see throughout the film. Not only does this make for a much more immersive scene, but it also provides a satisfyingly beautiful, cyclical moment, where towards the end of the film we have a very similar shot of Totone. This provides an important feeling of hope, a sense of passing the torch from one generation to the next, hammering home the value of shared experience.

With captivating performances from the likes of Faveau, Barthelemy and Luna Garret, overall, ‘Holy Cow’ is a promising debut for Louise Courvoisier. While not having a particularly groundbreaking or novel narrative, its honest portrayals of adolescence and responsibility

makes it’s an enjoyable watch with, at its heart, a beautiful and touching depiction of rural France, and a film that will leave you smiling.

Screenings are now showing at Tyneside Cinema, with tickets available to buy online or at our box office.