By Jake Wilson
HOLY COW ★★★
(M) 92 minutes
The Franche-Comté region of France, near the Swiss border, is famed for its wheels of cheese, made by farmers who follow traditional methods – if you want to get into this business, you’d better be prepared to plunge your forearm into a copper boiler filled with scaldingly hot milk – and who have to meet an especially strict set of standards before they’re allowed to use the Comté name.
Luna Garret and Clément Favreau in Holy Cow.
All this is laid out for us in Holy Cow, a first feature from writer-director Louise Courvoisier, who grew up in the region before leaving to attend film school. In one key moment, a cheese connoisseur samples a wedge and proclaims it’s inedible for the moment and needs time to mature.
There is, I’m afraid, a rather heavy-handed metaphor here. Listening in on the exchange is Totone (Clément Favreau), the film’s 18-year-old hero, who has good intentions but is still going through a maturing process of his own.
Visibly still more boy than man, he’s forced to grow up especially fast after the sudden death of his father, which leaves him as the sole guardian of his young sister (Luna Garret).
As a representative of French culture, Courvoisier has her own set of standards to maintain, seeking to combine a degree of raw realism with the kind of quaint charm that could appeal to tourists.
There’s an element of literal documentary in her approach, not just in the depiction of the cheese-making process but in scenes like one which shows the birth of a calf, and more generally in her use of non-professional actors whose awkwardness is part of their appeal.
At worst, Holy Cow could be taken as a balance of familiar grit and equally familiar feelgood formula – but there are some more surprising elements, especially the handling of Totone’s relationship with the somewhat older and significantly more adult Marie-Lise (Maïwene Barthelemy), a fellow orphan who has inherited a successful farm of her own.
Totone relies on Marie-Lise to initiate him into the mysteries of sex, but at the same time is not above exploiting her for his own purposes. All this is handled in a brisk, matter-of-fact way that combines openness with discretion and avoids overt moralising, even if Totone does have his share of lessons to learn.
There is something conservative in Holy Cow, perhaps wilfully so: an evident pride in a culture that maintains its standards and traditions, and a feeling the film might not be so different if it had been made a few decades back (there’s a lengthy montage set to the old standard, Kisses Sweeter Than Wine, originally made famous in the 1950s).
But if this is a film about learning to follow the rules, it’s also about finding your own path – and Courvoisier is a distinctive enough talent that it will be interesting to see how she develops. And the ending, which wraps up the story in a couple of shots, succeeds in being blunt and charming.
Holy Cow is released in cinemas on July 24.
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