Buy tickets: https://www.ticketsource.co.uk/thamecinema
Saturday, 25th of October, 8pm
Holy Cow
France 2024, 92 minutes, 15 certificate
Directed by Louise Courvoisier, Starring Clément Faveau, Maïwene Barthelemy, Luna Garret
Gritty and unsentimental, heartwarming and hilarious, Courvoisier’s stunning film debut is a coming of age story about a taciturn boy living a precarious life, his hard drinking and often violent community, but also about craftsmanship and tradition, friendship, family and hopeful possibility. Totone is an 18 year old son of a comté cheesemaker in the Jura region of eastern France. He and his younger sister live with their father, a serious drinker who is not really managing to keep the farm viable, just about scratching a living. Totone, meanwhile, is not really committed to the family business, more interested in the local girls, caning it on his moped and getting into scrapes and japes with his mates. However, events ensure that Totone has to take over the farm and the care of his sister. Learning of a 30K Euro prize for a comté competition, he decides that this will be the answer to his predicament; he has only to source the milk and learn for himself the fine and treacherous art of masterful cheesemaking. A social-realist story like this might, in different hands, have felt worthy or preachy, but Courvoisier’s film is utterly without any hand-wringing concern for its protagonists: rather the tone is one of triumphant defiance and a sheer revelry in life and all it throws at you. That the director is a farmer, too, brings a great respect and reverence for rural expertise and tradition, and she coaxes sensational performances all round from a non-professional cast. Such a treat. Watch the trailer here.
