Film
Louise Courvoisier’s debut feature, Holy Cow, is lavish in its affection for rural life, but never sentimental. By Christos Tsiolkas.
Tenderness is paramount in Holy Cow
Holy Cow begins with a long tracking shot that weaves through a country fair in the sun-drenched French countryside. The camera follows the burnt back of an elderly farmer as he navigates his way through the crowd and deposits a keg at a makeshift bar. A youth, Totone (Clément Faveau), is banging the counter, demanding beer. He’s already drunk and when the crowd starts singing a ditty about going to the Limousin, Totone climbs a table and begins to strip. He raises his arms in the air, takes off his underwear and wiggles his naked body to the cheering crowd.
“Holy Cow” is an apposite translation for the film’s French title, Vingt Dieux, literally “20 gods” which, like the English exclamation, is an old-fashioned euphemism that avoids a direct reference to the one divine god. There’s a further aptness to the English title in that Totone’s father, as does most of the town, works on the dairy farms that produce the cheese for which the region is renowned.
The song about the Limousin may refer to a location, but it also recalls that breed of French cattle. As Totone lifts his arms to the sky, we see him from below, the sun catching the sweat on his body. The image seems pagan, as if he is both a young god and a willing sacrifice.
This debut feature by Louise Courvoisier, who was raised in the Jura district of France where the story takes place, is unapologetic in its warm affection for rural life, yet her regard for the characters never becomes sentimental. The tensions between the traditional rhythms of rural life and the intrusions of the contemporary power the narrative drive of the film.
Soon after the near ecstatic opening scenes, Courvoisier cuts to a shot of Totone in bed, lying next to a girl he has picked up at the fair. He’s been awoken by the alarm on his mobile phone and its bluish light is almost a shock. He’s embarrassed because he was too drunk to get an erection. She just wants him out of her room before her parents wake up. There’s a comic playfulness to this scene, but we’re acutely aware of how young this couple is. Wordlessly, with deft economy, Courvoisier conveys how abrupt the passage between childhood and adulthood is for these young people.
Initially the introductory scenes seem lackadaisical, but I began to trust the director’s intent very quickly. As with that breathlessly exuberant opening, Courvoisier lands the audience directly into Totone’s life, introducing us to his hard-working alcoholic father, establishing the resilient bond between Totone and his younger sister, Claire (Luna Garret), and beautifully conveying the admixture of tenderness, mockery, loyalty and bravado between Totone and his best mates. These relationships are constantly foregrounded against the rhythms of the work and responsibilities of farm life.
The film’s narrative becomes more focused after the shocking death of Totone’s father. Totone has to assume responsibility for his home and for his sister. He gets a job working at a dairy but is fired after a fight with the owner’s son. In his brief stint working there, he listens in while a supercilious cheese critic explains that the comté cheese judged the finest in the district will be awarded €30,000 in prize money. Totone organises with his friends to steal milk from local dairies to create the perfect cheese.
I admit that my heart sank a little once the cheese-judging competition was introduced into the plot: I actually muttered out loud, “Don’t go there!” Fortunately, Courvoisier’s commitment to verisimilitude precludes a mawkish turn to an unrealistic David and Goliath showdown. The screenplay, co-written by the director and Théo Abadie, scrupulously avoids both exposition and caricature.
The absence of the children’s mother is never explained and though we witness how his drunken father embarrasses Totone, we are left in no doubt that he is also a caring parent. The scenes in which the young people experiment with and learn the craft of cheesemaking are filmed with a forensic care. One of the more delightful characters in the film is an older, no-nonsense cheesemaker, played by Isabelle Courageot. A first-time actor like many of the cast, Courageot’s expertise is fascinating. We comprehend her pride in her craft and sense that she is giving Totone the first stirrings of a possible vocation.
The script’s flexibility in allowing Courvoisier to inhabit the film with these documentary-like tangents is important, because the narrative is dramatically slender. Apart from Totone’s striving to win the prize and the tentative relationship he begins with a young farmworker, Marie-Lise (Maïwene Barthelemy), there isn’t much urgency. Courvoisier’s talent is for the observational and though Holy Cow evinces that she has real perception and instinct as a filmmaker, there are some clumsy moments. None of the scenes involving fights between Totone and a couple of the town bullies is convincing, either in the writing or execution. A climactic stock-car rally is shot and edited so cursorily that it fails to excite us either visually or emotionally.
Thankfully, one clear talent that Courvoisier possesses is her skill with performers. Faveau and Barthelemy are both wonderful, each lacing their respective characters with a forthrightness and toughness that is dynamically authentic. Totone’s diffidence and Marie-Lise’s wariness means they are never mugging for the audience. They are unafraid to reveal the startling friction of awkwardness and raging hormonal drive that are a part of adolescent coupling. Faveau has never acted before, and this is the first major role for Barthelemy. Undoubtedly Courvoisier’s empathy as a director was crucial in the truthfulness of both performances.
Her care and attentiveness are also present in the scenes involving Totone and Claire. We intuit the trust and love between the siblings. Garret’s naturalness is winning, a quality that emanates from all the performers in this film. The two young non-professionals who play Totone’s best friends, Mathis Bernard and Dimitri Baudry, also feel like real kids, and the bonds of the trio’s friendship seem genuine and unforced.
The countryside in French films is increasingly reduced to being a nostalgic backdrop for vacationing bourgeois city-dwellers. More fruitfully, if less commonly, the pastoral is the location for damning social critiques. There is a powerful resolve to a film such as Bruno Dumont’s La Vie de Jésus (1997), which captured the degradation of contemporary peasant reality. Édouard Louis’ 2014 book, The Life of Eddy, which countered nostalgia with the sickening portrayal of the violence in rural communities, has equal muscle. Xenophobia and racism were the manifestations of alienation in Dumont’s film, just as misogyny and homophobia buttressed tradition in Louis’ novel. I love both for their shocking validity, the disciplined rage of Dumont’s filmmaking and Louis’ writing. The risk of Courvoisier’s benevolent eye is that a film such as Holy Cow, suffused with such fondness for its characters, might seem inconsequential in comparison.
I think such an appraisal would be a mistake. If there is a comparison to be made with Courvoisier’s work in Holy Cow, it would be with Chloé Zhao’s The Rider (2017). Zhao too prioritises the possibilities of non-actors and employs a style that owes much to the vérité of the documentary traditions. As with Zhao’s film, tenderness is paramount in Holy Cow, even when the circumstances around Totone and his friends are brutal.
Another tracking shot concludes Holy Cow, the subjective camera following Faveau as he weaves past a crowd, both insider and outsider. We, as the audience, are also being led out from the film and away from these communities. The last moment of delight between Faveau and Barthelemy, a joyful reprise for Totone’s pagan nakedness at the beginning, is worth the price of the ticket alone. The weary grind of sexist expectations might get to Marie-Lise, and Totone may succumb to the alcoholism that destroyed his father. The ending, however, also offers promise.
Days after seeing Holy Cow, walking past the local high school in my suburb, seeing the young students on the tram, my thoughts kept returning to Totone and his friends. I wanted them to be safe and I wanted them to be happy. I realised how grateful I was for Courvoisier’s sober generosity.
Holy Cow is playing in cinemas.
ARTS DIARY
EXHIBITION Grace Wood: A Garden is a Mother
Heide Museum of Modern Art, Woi Wurrung Country/Bulleen, until November 15
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LAST CHANCE
MUSIC The Royal Organist
Concert Hall, Meanjin/Brisbane, until July 27
This article was first published in the print edition of The Saturday Paper on July 26, 2025 as "Cheese dreams".
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