Cheesemaking meets toxic masculinity in coming-of-age story Holy Cow
What: An emotionally affecting, unassuming coming-of-age story with a cast of non-professional actors.
Starring: Clément Faveau, Maïwene Barthelemy.
Directed by: Louise Courvoisier.
When: In cinemas.
Likely to make you feel: Gently transported into the life of rural, working-class children.
Holy Cow's coming-of-age story centres on Totone (Clément Faveau), an 18-year-old boy who lives on a farm in the remote French Alps region of Jura with his alcoholic cheesemaker father and seven-year-old sister Claire (Luna Garret).
After Claire is left in Totone's care following their father's untimely death, the teen hatches an aspirational plan to win 30,000 euro ($53,500) of prize money in a cheesemaking competition.
Many of the actions of Holy Cow's rapscallion protagonist stem from deep feelings of inadequacy and shame in a world that does not allow the space for men to be emotional and complex.
Beyond the economic precarity of his life, he labours beneath unspoken rules that govern relations between men and women and lofty gendered expectations that he can not always meet.
He violently lashes out at a peer when the subject of his affections rejects him, affects a feigned air of disgust when discussing pleasuring women with his closest male friends, and generally regards women his age as a means to an end.
An antidote to the undercurrent of toxic masculinity is Totone's tight-knit friendships with schoolmates Jean-Yves (Mathis Bernard) and Francis (Dimitri Baudry).
The way they care for each other is imperfect yet enviable in its ability to counter the grief and trauma that Totone, in particular, is undergoing.
Another respite is Totone's guardianship of Claire, who he lovingly and unstintingly cares for to the best of his abilities.
Together, Totone, Jean-Yves, Francis and Claire are a hodgepodge quartet muddling their way through life.
Central to Totone's ploy to make the best Comté in the region is pilfering grade-A milk from Marie-Lise (Maïwene Barthelemy), a young, straight-talking farmer he starts seeing.
The pastoral beauty of Comté cheese country — where Courvoisier herself is from — is expertly evoked through Elio Balezeaux's lens, though the insularity of living in a small town with limited possibilities is depicted in equal measure.
Faveau's understated performance as Totone expertly balances trepidation with the increasing realisation that he can break out of the confines of gender and class in his life. Yet, as the film adeptly shows, transcending one's station in life is not as easy as a cheesemaking competition may lead you to believe.
Holy Cow could have materialised into a bleak study of poverty and misfortune, but it remains intentionally warm and hopeful despite the mishaps Totone experiences — while not varnishing the challenges of growing up without emotional and material anchors.
It is not interested in textbook happy endings or neat resolutions for its characters. They hurt each other and act with a recklessness typical of who they are — children.
Instead, it morphs into an optimistic portrait of chosen family and accelerated adulthood, with the cheese a not-so-subtle metaphor for Totone's growing maturity and eventual entry into a world he had no choice but to join.
Holy Cow is in Australian cinemas now.
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