17/05/2024 - CANNES 2024: Louise Courvoisier blows in a fresh wind with her first feature, following a young man with his back against the wall who sets out on an unprecedented adventure

Mathis Bernard, Clément Favreau and Dimitri Baudry in Holy Cow

"Can you make fire? Can you make cheese?" It ix in the heart of the Jura, in a world of dairy cows, agricultural festivals and Comté cheese-making, but above all in the wake of local young people confronted with the vital need to take charge of their lives in a difficult context, that the young French filmmaker Louise Courvoisier immersed herself, with great accuracy and masterful simplicity, unveiling her first feature film, Holy Cow [+see also:
interview: Louise Courvoisier
film profile], in the Un Certain Regard competition at the 77th Cannes Film Festival.

"I'm in deep shit (...), I'm screwing everything up, I'm not getting anywhere". For the impulsive Anthony (Clément Favreau), known to everyone as Totone, the days of carefree, one-night stands whose names you can't even remember and drinking in the village with his childhood pals Jean-Yves (Mathis Bernard) and Francis (Dimitri Baudry) come to an abrupt end with the accidental death of his father. Now responsible for his little sister Claire (Luna Garret), completely penniless and with no family to fall back on, the 18-year-old is forced to sell the equipment from his father's small cheese factory (an activity in which he had absolutely no interest). But when he finds out about a competition that would award €30,000 to the best Comté cheese, he decides to go underground (with the help of his two friends and the support of his sister) and try his hand at a job he knows nothing about. What Totone does know is that you need milk, and that's just as well, because the fruity quality of the milk produced by the young farmer Marie-Lise (Maiwene Barthelemy), who makes straightforward advances towards him, is renowned throughout the region. The problem is that there's no money, so there's a lot of lying and stealing involved in an ‘operation comté’ that's far from a sure thing.

Holy Cow has a strong appeal that goes beyond the simple “let's rediscover our province and the French countryside” fad in French cinema (from Bloody Milk [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Hubert Charuel
film profile] to Junkyard Dog [+see also:
trailer
film profile]). It is a coming of age story that is accessible to all audiences and injects a refreshing ‘county bumpkins’ style of comedy into human and social themes that many would have turned into dramas. In its own way, the film deals - with precision (a script written by the director with Théo Abadie) and great authenticity (all the performers are non-professionals) - with the topics of youth and culture in farming areas, employment (“I get up at 5am, I finish at 10pm, I have no weekends, no holidays and I don't spend my weekends getting drunk”) to the passing on of a cheese heritage, but also entertainment (stock car racing), family, friendship and love. All very simple but skilfully balanced ingredients that avoid stereotypes make this first feature film a successful recipe.

Holy Cow was produced by Agat Films & Ex Nihilo, co-produced by France 3 Cinéma and Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes Cinéma, and sold by Pyramide International.

(Translated from French by Margaux Comte)