After winning the first prize in the Cinéfondation competition with her graduation short Mano a mano in 2019, Louise Courvoisier returned to Cannes in 2024, in Un Certain Regard, with her debut feature Holy Cow (a somewhat euphemistic translation of the more blasphemous original Vingt Dieux). It won the Youth Award, and appears set to continue making a splash on the festival circuit (including Karlovy Vary’s popular non-competitive Horizons strand) thanks to its youthful energy, both on and off screen.
Courvoisier was raised in Jura, a département in the Bourgogne-Franche-Comté region of France, famous for its Comté cheese. And it is there that she decided to set her film, paying homage to her roots via the story of Totone (Clément Faveau), an 18-year old boy whose main concerns in life are drinking beer and attending local fairs and parties with his friends. When tragedy strikes through the premature death of his father, he suddenly has to figure out how to support himself and his seven-year old sister. One idea would be to manufacture the perfect batch of Comté, which would be worth 30,000 euros in prize money in a local contest. Except, of course, Totone knows next to nothing about the whole business. Which is where the strategy of seducing the young but seasoned farmer Marie-Lise (Maïwene Barthelemy) comes into play…
Filmed entirely on location in Courvoisier’s native village, Holy Cow has a lived-in atmosphere that undoubtedly stems from the circumstances of the production: the crew, some of whom slept in her house during the shoot, was a mixture of out-of-town professionals and locals (including members of the director’s family), while the cast consists solely of regional non-actors who had to put their day jobs on hold for eight weeks and contribute their rural experience to the film (Faveau, whose character is fairly ignorant of agricultural life, was training to become a chicken farmer at the time of the casting).
The chaos that occasionally disrupts the daily routine of these people was also part of the production process: one scene in particular, involving the real birth of a calf, almost got derailed when the cow’s planned schedule didn’t align with the crew’s. As such, while the screenplay does wallow in the classic coming-of-age tropes, there is an unrehearsed spontaneity to the performances, enhanced by the regional accent, that elevates the material, particularly when the chemistry between Faveau and Barthelemy (both of whom should at least consider acting as a continuing side gig in the future) is required to provide some bucolic charm to the film’s more contrived plot points.
Besides the young natural talents in front of the camera, the major star of the picture is cinematographer Elio Balezeaux, another feature first-timer (his only previous credit is a short), who expertly captures the sweaty allure of everyday life in Jura, the vibrant youthfulness of the new generation and the appeal of the Comté culture, with scenes so perfectly lensed the cheese’s smell and taste come close to breaking out of the screen and hit the viewer head-on. And at that point, it becomes irrelevant whether Totone will win the contest or not: the real win is the movie itself, a confident calling card for everyone involved and one of the more charming French debuts in recent years.
Director: Louise Courvoisier
Screenwriters: Louise Courvoisier, Théo Abadie
Cast: Clément Faveau, Luna Garret, Mathis Bernard, Maïwene Barthelemy, Lucas Marillier, Dimitry Baudry, Armand Sancey Richard
Producers: Muriel Meynard
Cinematography: Elio Balezeaux
Production design: Ella Courvoisier
Costume design: Thierry Delettre
Music: Linda Courvoisier, Charlie Courvoisier
Sound: François Abdelnour, Sandy Notarianni, Thomas Besson
Production companies: Ex Nihilo, France 3 Cinéma
World sales: Pyramide International
Venue: Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (Horizons)
In French
90 minutes
