"NO ONE WAS TELLING THEIR STORIES": LOUISE COURVOISIER ON THE RURAL ADOLESCENCE OF 'HOLY COW'
- Agnès Houghton-Boyle
- Apr 6
- 10 min read
We first meet Totone, (Clément Faveau) the protagonist of Louise Courvoisier’s Holy Cow, in the hot and sticky stasis of his eighteenth summer. He and his friends move through the world with the looseness of a life shaped by manual labour in the Franche-Comté region – farming, milking, working with animals – sweat, mud beer, bruises. It is an interlude of teenage indolence reminiscent of the in-between space described in Nicolas Mathieu’s Prix Goncourt-winning novel Their Children After Them, where aimless adolescents drift through small-town life in the post-industrial valleys of the Great East.
Totone channels his boredom into partying hard, messing around and chasing girls. In the film's early moments, he finds himself stranded in a nearby village, curled up in a bus shelter waiting for his dad after going home with a girl he met at a regional cattle show. They drive home more or less wordlessly, with the soft slinking morning unveiling the dramatic beauty of the Jura. The peacefulness of this backdrop with its deep green valleys and sprawling pastures dotted with farms – closes a lid on the messiness of the night before. But soon enough, Totone is the one dragging his drunken father off the floor of a local dance and stuffing him, barefoot, into his car to drive himself home. As they ride their motorcycles home from the dance later that night, Totone and his friends spot the car slammed into a tree at the bottom of a ditch, smoking.
Holy Cow is fundamentally a coming-of-age story shaped by very a specific political and economic landscape. If Mathieu captures the generational inertia within manufacturing towns left behind by the economic shifts of the 80s and 90s – the frustration and resentment of a generation that would culminate in the 2018 Gilet Jaunes protests – Courvoisier turns her attention to a similarly unstable future. Rather than describing an industry in crisis, she homes in on the creeping sense of entrapment that settles in across a few short years and roots a person within the agricultural region they were raised. This is not a story about getting out but about enduring – when the responsibility of staying put lands on your shoulders.
Holy Cow is Courvoisier’s debut feature. It premiered at Cannes where it won the Un Certain Regard Award before picking up the César Award for Best Film and will be released in UK cinemas on April 11.
You grew up in the Jura region yourself. How long did you know that you wanted to tell the story of your region and how long did you leave before coming back?
I moved to a town a little further away from the region for high school. I wanted to get out and see something else and that was how I started doing cinema. After finishing I moved to Paris and then Vienna so I was away from my home for maybe nine years in total. I’d started writing during my studies but after graduating I came directly back and continued from there. Even while I studied in Paris and Lyon, it was always obvious to me that I would come back. That connection to the land never really leaves you. When you grow up in the countryside, there’s always a part of you that’s tied to it.
One of the main inspirations for the film was seeing how different the lives of people my age in the Jura were from mine. Some struggled, some didn’t make it and I realised that no one was telling their stories. There were so many misconceptions about rural life - when I lived in the city, I would hear people talk about the countryside as if it were something entirely different from what I knew.
I wanted to make a film about the people who didn’t have the same chances I had, about their challenges and resilience but also their joy. A lot of movies about the countryside are about farming - dramas about how hard it is to be a farmer today. But I wanted to tell a story about the people themselves - what it’s like to grow up there, to have limited job opportunities, to struggle to find your place. I wanted to show the difficulties of how they live but also the warmth and humour of their lives.
The Jura is famous for its cheese-making tradition and the farms in the region operate inside of a cooperative model so that individual farmers will pool their milk together and smaller farms have access to larger-scale production. It’s interesting to me that you chose to tell the story of a character who sits outside this system, rather than say Marie-Lise who runs a section of her father’s farm herself. Particularly, as it seems that you come from a very artistic background and your family was a big part of the filmmaking process. I know that your sister, Ella Courvoisier, handled set design; your brother, Pablo, was the construction manager; and your mother, along with siblings Linda and Charlie composed the music – and Elio Balezeaux, your cinematographer – is a longtime friend who also grew up in the countryside. Why do you think that this was the story of the region you wanted to tell?
I’ve always had a foot in both worlds. My parents were musicians who became farmers, and my childhood was a mixture of art and agriculture. So, even though I took a different path, I also have a very strong connection with that world, and it was mine for a long time before I left. I grew up attending the village dances that you see in the film, the parties, stock car races and the beauty pageants for the cows – this kind of thing is really common in the region. I have a different background from many of my peers though and the reason I left was because I had a cultural curiosity that they didn’t – they didn’t have the same opportunities, so they would never have taken the path I did. I was very aware of that. At the same time, I’ve always felt very distant from the cinema world and people, so I'm always in between both worlds. I think that's how I had, maybe the right distance to talk about this subject. If you’re too much in it, it can be very difficult to approach – but if you’re too removed, you don't have the same understanding.
It's funny to me because a lot of people have been asking me how I was able to work with my family or rather how did I survive working with my family? For a lot of people, it would be hard to imagine, but for me, it was the most natural thing. They had followed the whole process. I had talked about it a lot while I was writing, and they also helped me a lot with the casting, so I didn't have to explain it to them by the time it came to filming, they were really involved in every step of the way. If I could only ever work with them, that would work for me.
Stills courtesy of Conic Films
Can you tell me about how you approached costuming? One of the first moments I really noticed the clothing in the film was during the funeral when Totone and his younger sister Claire are wearing these simple, dark-coloured tracksuit tops. The clothes ground them in their situation, which is that they are alone now. Throughout the film, the characters have a kind of practical indifference in how they relate to their own and each other’s bodies. Then, later, when Totone meets Marie-Lise for the first time and struggles to connect the spivit at her dairy – she gets soaked and without hesitation quite roughly strips off her overalls and tugs on another pair – which is this unexpectedly sensual moment for him and shifts something in him. How did you think about costuming to express these ideas?
Costuming is very important to me and I worked very closely with my costume designers. I think people aren’t interested enough in costume; it’s something that helps to identify a character – where they’re from. You tell the story through the clothes and when I can I don’t use dialogue, I try to film the language of the body, or whatever else is in the room, the clothes, the mess, everything. In the funeral scene, Totone and Claire couldn’t just be wearing black shirts, it wasn’t their style – I wanted to show that they had tried to pick the darkest clothes they owned. I also knew that I wanted to incorporate a lot of bright colours while filming. There’s a perception that people in the countryside are quite dark and that they don’t think about how they dress, that it’s not important to them, neither of which is true at all. So, it was important for me to be very accurate about this. Clothing was also a way to show the evolution between Totone and his little sister. He’s clumsy in the beginning but learns, through dressing her, how to look after her. Her dressing also tells a lot about her personality. She doesn’t speak a lot in the film, but you can see she’s wearing some of her father’s and brother’s clothes.
Still courtesy of Conic Films
There’s been some discussion about how your film has similarities to Ken Loach’s work, and Andrea Arnold’s - though her filmmaking is much harsher than what you're doing here, I think. Your cinematographer, Balezeaux, mentioned that you were watching a lot of Westerns while making the film, which got me thinking about how Westerns often depict the creation of a new frontier, a new way of life – which is what the young people in the film are doing. They’re incredibly independent, navigating the world largely on their own. Not just Totone and Claire, but also Marie-Lise who manages a portion of her father’s farm on her own at a very young age. There’s a real sense of a new generation carving out its own path – was that something you were thinking about when watching the Westerns?
Westerns were definitely an inspiration. There’s something brutal about the way of life I show in the film. In the countryside you’re more independent at a younger age, it’s true – you start working earlier and take on more responsibility. In the film, there’s a constant contrast between their childishness – in their sexuality and attitude – and something very mature that coexists, and that’s interesting to me. I wanted to capture some of the harshness – but also the sublime beauty of the region, which is what a Western does. I wanted to show that they are working a lot with their bodies, Marie-Lise especially. I wanted her body to be beautiful. In the beginning, our makeup artist tried this glowy beauty look on her, it was a natural look, how you would do it for a film, but it was too polished. I knew that the beauty had to come from somewhere else in her, not from the kind of makeup she wore. She needed to have some dirt on her skin. That's, more interesting to me. I think that’s also what a Western does, finds the beauty in the characters even with their flaws. The flaws are what make them beautiful. I talked a lot with my cinematographer about capturing the light and beauty but also flaws in the landscape while filming.
And in the end, Totone’s situation remains flawed. Even though he's starting to understand how to make things right between him and Marie-Lise, he’s still stuck trying to make a living and support his sister. You don't smooth things over or tie up all the loose ends. The beauty lies in that ongoing struggle, in that difficult, transitional moment.
What’s more important is that winning the cheese-making competition, that he entered, was that it helped him move forward in life. It was the key. What he learned during the process was more significant than the outcome. I couldn’t just have him win the medal and pretend everything was suddenly okay, that would’ve felt false to me. It would have been betraying the character. But at the same time, I still wanted something hopeful, something bright. So, while it’s not a perfect resolution, the ending is still positive. His character has evolved so much by the end, but there’s still a long way to go.
Still courtesy of Conic Films
It’s obviously a different filmmaking process when you're not working with trained actors. But I’m curious if working with non-professionals from the region changed the direction of the film in any ways you didn’t anticipate?
I knew from the start that I’d be working with non-professionals, and I was aiming for these particular characters, and thinking about the area while I was writing. I of course adapted the script to fit them because the characters are so close to who they are in real life but they very much matched what I had imagined.
Casting was a long process, and they definitely didn’t realise what they were signing up for. I had to convince them to take part and getting them on board took a bit of time. I think they saw it as a fun, small project – which was great because I didn’t want them to feel too pressured. It’s so far removed from their daily lives – they’re farmers and teenagers. When we started rehearsing on weekends, they were often a bit hungover, which was... challenging! And two weeks before we finished shooting, Clément – who is a really strong character in real life – broke his leg after partying too much. As the main character, he was carrying the whole film on his shoulders. I didn’t want him to feel any pressure, but I still needed him to be strong enough to go all the way. We had a great relationship, though – he knew me well, and I knew him, and we were able to adapt to his needs in those final weeks.
When we went to Cannes together, that was the first time everyone started to realise how big the project actually was. Up until then, I think they thought it was just a small film, and they were like, "Oh, sorry, we didn't take it seriously before." The film ended up being really successful in France, and they got a lot of attention. It was definitely a surprise for them, but they were really happy with the film. Maïwene Barthelemy won a César for Most Promising Actress and I think she’d like to keep acting even as she continues farming. I think Mathis Bernard, Totone’s friend who races, will continue too.
Holy Cow will be released in UK Cinemas on April 11th and can is screening in London Cinemas from April 8th.
Agnès Houghton-Boyle is a critic and programmer based in London. Her writing features in Talking Shorts Magazine and Fetch London.
