HOLY COW - Mark Reviews Movies

Holy Cow, Zeitgeist Films

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Review by Mark Dujsik | March 27, 2025

The young man at the center of Holy Cow lives what looks like an ideal life for an 18-year-old in an idyllic region of France. Totone (Clément Faveau) lives on a dairy farm with his small family, but if he has worked on that farm in the past, the newfound freedom of adulthood has changed that. Most of his nights are filled with hanging out and drinking with his two best friends, and his days are spent sleeping off the inevitable hangover and hanging out more with his buddies, as they await that evening's festivities.

There's not much to get about this character at first, in other words, beyond the opening scene of co-writer/director Louise Courvoisier's debut feature. The camera follows a man hauling a new keg of beer at a local fair and arrives at Totone, who's first in line to get a drink. Already tipsy, the guy proceeds to hop on a table, perform a little dance for the crowd, and strips naked as the audience cheers him on.

For all of that showiness, however, we do see a bit of vulnerability in Totone, who heads back to a young woman's home with her, finds himself too nervous to perform in bed, and is soon kicked out of the house. He might technically be a man, but there's still a lot of boy in this character, as he relies on his father to pick him up at a nearby bus stop and drive him back to the farm. He repays his dad's favor by refusing to work to spend time with his friends.

Totone's circumstances are about to change significantly, as he suddenly finds himself in full responsibility of the farm and his younger sister Claire (Luna Garret). The father, as it turns out, has a habit of drinking, too, and at the same festival that his son is attending, he has too much to drink. Totone helps his dad into his car, and after getting into a fight about the young woman he had met the previous night, the son finds his father's car crashed into a tree along the side of a country home. His two friends, Jean-Yves (Mathis Bernard) and Franics (Dimitry Baudry), go to check on the accident, because Totone seems to already know that his father is dead in the car.

The rest of the film puts forth a simple question: Can Totone, who has shown himself to be irresponsible and unproductive and rather uncaring about the needs of his family, get his act together in order to maintain the farm and raise his 8-year-old sister? The answer, like people and life in general, is more complicated than a simple yes or no, and that is what's admirable about Courvoisier and Théo Abadie's screenplay. It's honest about this young man, who was already caught between being an adult but still wanting to act as a child, because, now, he needs to be an adult, not only for his own sake but for that of his little sister, and doesn't quite know how to do it.

He messes up a lot, even when he's trying his best and doesn't know he is making an error. With no money and no family to help, Totone starts selling off equipment, because he isn't prepared to run an entire farm on his own. He takes a job at a rival dairy, which happens to be run by the father of the young men he accosted at that festival, but that situation doesn't last long, of course, because the farmer's sons abuse him and know just how to get a rise out of Totone. He's fired almost as soon as he was hired, but in the process, he does meet Marie-Lise (Maïwène Barthelemy), his ex-employer's daughter who runs a different dairy farm on her own.

His new plan, which he devises on a whim after learning about a cheesemaking competition, is sound enough, perhaps. Totone decides to make cheese, in hopes of winning €30,000 prize, but he has already sabotaged that scheme by selling everything a dairy farmer would need.

He needs milk, for one thing, but after meeting Marie-Lise, he knows where he can get some—steal it, to be specific. While his friends and sister wait for Totone to find the key to Marie-Lise's barn, something unexpected happens. She kisses him, and he's genuine when he kisses her back, accepts her invitation to go to bed with her, and is again far too anxious to do anything on his end. It's quite sweet, except when we realize that Totone still intends to go ahead with his original plan of stealing milk from Marie-Lise.

The tension here, then, is in the contradiction of this young man, who genuinely does grow to have a lot of genuine affection for Marie-Lise but also has his mind set on his get-rich-quick scheme. That doesn't require Totone to deceive the farmer, but once he sets down that path, it becomes increasingly difficult for him to be honest with her about the reason for his first meeting, because he does have sincere feelings for her. The film understands this character to his core, which is torn between the sudden necessity for him to be an adult and his unpreparedness to actually be one.

We can sympathize with him up to a point, and the filmmakers are smart enough to know that exact point, too, by making Marie-Lise a strong, independent, and knowing character unto herself. It's important that she exists in that way in Holy Cow, because, while she serves as a reason for Totone to learn a lesson about taking responsibility for himself and his actions, she's also outside of and beyond that lesson, too. She doesn't need him, but it would mean something about the man Totone is if she wanted him, for sure.

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