Holy Cow (2024)

Some films don’t announce themselves with grand statements or sweeping emotion; they sneak up on you, like morning fog rolling in across the hills. Holy Cow, the debut feature from French filmmaker Louise Courvoisier, is one of those films. It doesn’t reinvent the wheel—Comté or otherwise—but it does something harder: it feels lived in, local, and quietly affecting.

The story centres on Totone, a teenage boy in a struggling corner of the French Jura, who suddenly finds himself without a father and with more responsibilities than he knows what to do with. His solution? Enter a cheesemaking competition with a cash prize that could set things right. It’s an absurd plan, and the film doesn’t treat it as anything else—but there’s also something noble in it, something recognisably adolescent. That combination—earnestness rubbing shoulders with recklessness—is where Holy Cow finds its strongest footing.

Clément Faveau, a non-professional actor and actual farmworker, plays Totone with a kind of scruffy, defiant charm. He’s not polished, but he doesn’t need to be. His performance has a raw, searching quality that fits the role like a well-worn work jacket. The rest of the cast, many drawn from the local community, add texture and warmth. There’s a sense that everyone here knows what milking a cow actually feels like.

Visually, the film leans into the natural beauty of its setting—misty mornings, run-down barns, the golden hush of late afternoon light. But it never romanticises rural life. You can almost smell the muck. The cinematography isn’t flashy, and that’s the point; it trusts the material to carry its weight.

There’s no shortage of films about young men trying to find themselves, but Holy Cow stands apart in its attention to place and its refusal to moralise. Totone’s choices aren’t always wise (far from it), but they’re understandable. His world is one where good options are thin on the ground, and the line between resourcefulness and desperation is often blurred. This, in a quiet way, is where the film brushes up against larger themes—rural decline, intergenerational hardship, the fragility of male identity when stripped of its usual signposts. None of this is spelled out, but it’s there, like an ache beneath the surface.

Thematically, the film touches on plenty that’s relevant: economic insecurity, youth disenfranchisement, the clash between tradition and modern pressure. There’s something faintly sociological about it—though it never tips into lecture. If anything, its restraint is one of its strengths. It trusts us to notice the deeper tensions: how masculinity gets shaped (and misshaped) by expectation, how dignity can survive even when pride takes a hit, how small acts of care—towards people or animals—still matter.

That said, it’s not without flaws. At 92 minutes, some plot threads feel a bit rushed, and a couple of emotional beats don’t quite land. You may find yourself wishing for just five or ten more minutes to let things breathe. But these are minor gripes. The film’s heart is in the right place, and it never tries to be more than it is.

So, why 3.5 out of 5? Because it’s good—occasionally very good—but not quite great. It’s rough around the edges, a little uneven, and sometimes a bit too understated for its own good. But it has something rare: an authentic voice, a strong sense of place, and a main character you can believe in—even when you want to give him a good shake.

Holy Cow may not grab headlines or clean up at the awards, but it stays with you. It’s a small story with real texture, and in an age of factory-farmed filmmaking, that counts for something.