“‘Crowd-pleaser’ is not a word people always respect in film festivals, but a story with an honest heart like Holy Cow should always go a long way.”

I have to be honest, I didn’t expect to find such a crowd-pleaser as Holy Cow in this year’s Cannes lineup. This is unmistakably the story of Totone, the 18-year-old lad living in the Jura region of France. In my native language of Turkish we call boys of his age “crazy bloods”, and that perfectly fits Totone. He drinks, he flirts, he dares to show himself naked in a village fair, he’s a vagabond with no care in the world and pretty sure that’s all that life has to offer. Determined he won’t turn out anything like his heavy-drinking and constantly self-humiliating father, destiny has other plans for him though…

When the father is abruptly out of the picture, life doesn’t give Totone even days to figure out what he must do. The young boy rolls into the adult obligations of life almost in the blink of an eye. Life is a pool you’re thrown into and you either learn how to swim fast or you’re out. Totone has a little sister to take care of and no relatives to lend a helping hand. He can only use what he learned from his father to make a living, so he starts working on a dairy farm. And that’s a tough job. You can party late one night, maybe two, before your body gives in to the day-to-day working hours of dairy farms and cheese making. No one can escape growing up in these conditions. Not even a day. Hence the coming-of-age story of Totone.

Past conflicts with the sons of the farm owner will come back to bite him in the ass, and a young love with the daughter will create even more conflicts. Totone, still naïve, will look for a shortcut to big money. And the region will present a solution to him: an award-winning Comté cheese can bring 30.000 Euros in an instant. But when you have to steal the milk and other ingredients from your girlfriend’s farm, and your flirting with her can be received as deceitfulness, Totone’s easy path to becoming rich is doomed to have setbacks.

This boy’s journey to becoming a man, and a trustworthy big brother, presents itself with a well-executed crowd-pleasing formula in Holy Cow. Formulas are safe, and there’s nothing wrong with that. You take a template, and if you can find a fresh new setup for that, thousand-year-old stories can still work, they will forever work. Holy Cow introduces us to this specific region and its cheese-making culture. Creates fleshed out characters to keep us invested. Totone is flawed and makes a lot of mistakes, but he remains honest about them. So we like him, we care about him. And everything simply works.

First-time director Louise Courvoisier tells a familiar story from the region where she grew up, and the authenticity and sincerity shows in each and every character. All the young actors are remarkable, but she’s well aware she has a rare find in the actor who plays Totone, Clément Faveau . The film doesn’t have a single scene without him in it and the camera is always close to the actor, almost treating him like a new Jamie Bell in Billy Elliott kind of find. Faveau truly has that kind of charm, and he gives such a comfortably natural performance. Totone’s trying to achieve something, anything, and find his place in the world, like all his other friends actually. He doesn’t shy away from this, nor does the film.

The writing and direction seem as comfortable as Faveau. Courvoisier shooting in her homeland must be a factor. Probably the only thing that did not land with me was the young boy’s erectile dysfunction storyline. ‘Cause you know, 18-year-olds… It feels like a script device, just to emphasize how he overcomes it through his sexual awakening with Marie-Lise. Courvoisier sure finds sweet ways to repair the relationships and win hearts. I know “crowd-pleaser” is not a word people always respect in film festivals, but a story with an honest heart should always go a long way.