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?
