Holy Cow, which opened in theaters throughout Israel last week, is a movie set in a cheese-making region, and one of the great things about watching a movie with this backdrop is that you can see what the cheese-makers do and imagine how good the cheese will taste, without having to smell it.
This is a French movie that combines a gritty, coming-of-age story in a rural setting with a foodie drama about artisanal cheese, and it’s a winning combination. The movie has won several important awards, including the Un Certain Regard Youth Prize from the Cannes Film Festival, and two Cesar Awards, France’s Oscar equivalent, for Best First Film for its director, Louise Courvoisier. Its lead actress, Maïwène Barthelemy, won Best Female Revelation, an award for up-and-coming young actors.
The movie, which is set in and filmed in the town of Jura, part of the Bourgogne-Franche-Comté region, has a real sense of place, and the actors were reportedly mainly non-professionals from the area, including the lead actor, Clément Faveau.
He plays Totone, a typical 18-year-old boy who lives with his father, who runs a cheese-making farm. Totone isn’t particularly interested in his seven-year-old sister, Claire (Luna Garrett), or helping out on the farm. He’s too busy drinking with his friends, one of whom races stock cars, pranking rivals, and chasing girls. His mother is out of the picture, although we don’t learn why.
One night, when his father is drunk and embarrasses him at a community party, Totone yells at him to get lost, then feels understandably guilty after his father is killed driving home. Just old enough to take responsibility for his sister, he quickly sells his father’s tractor and gets a job at another, bigger local cheese factory. Given that he’s just gone through a trauma and has to work with a thuggish bunch of guys he has fought with in the past, it doesn’t go very well.
But he does know a lot about cheese, and before he loses the job, he goes with the staff to a cheese fair where he learns that there is a regional competition where the prize is €30,000. Certain that he can win it using his father’s equipment, he gains maturity and enlists the help of his friends and Claire to learn all he can about the craft.
Along the way, he befriends Marie-Lise (Barthelemy), a beautiful dairy farmer around his age, who has inherited the farm and runs it with her brothers. Soon, he has fallen for her, but theirs is an uneasy combination of business partnership and romantic relationship.
Optimistic without being cheesy
It’s clear early on that while there is optimism in this story, particularly in how Totone rises to the challenge of caring for his sister and developing focus and ambition, this isn’t a cheesy Rocky, where an underdog triumphs against all odds.
It’s strictly grounded in reality, and there is a lot of screen time given to videos and live demonstrations of the cheese-making process, which will be fascinating for foodies, and as mentioned earlier, you can enjoy it without any sour smell. But for a character like Totone, who starts out so selfish and aimless, the triumph is developing a goal, and this part of the story unfolds very realistically and is rewarding to watch.
The performances are all good, and Faveau as Totone commands the screen like an experienced performer. There isn’t a false note in his performance, and despite his typical teen self-absorption early on, he gets the audience to root for him. At one point, he dyes his blond hair a reddish color and becomes a dead ringer for Prince Harry.
If you’d like a slice-of-life drama, then you will enjoy Holy Cow, which celebrates the cheese-making craft but always keeps the human drama front and center.