Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Stay informed with free updatesSimply sign up to the Film myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.The French expression \u201cVingt dieux!\u201d (\u201cTwenty gods!\u201d) essentially means \u201cBloody hell!\u201d As the title of Louise Courvoisier\u2019s debut feature, it has been translated as Holy Cow \u2014 a neat equivalent since whenever we hear the phrase in this film there is, as often as not, actually a cow or calf on screen.Set in eastern France\u2019s Jura region, this is a boisterous piece of rural realism about a carefree, clueless teenager who must grow up quickly when his alcoholic father is killed. Left alone with a young sister to raise, Totone (newcomer Cl\u00e9ment Faveau) is convinced that, by quickly boning up on dad\u2019s craft as a cheesemaker, he can land a generous payout for a prizewinning Comt\u00e9.Courvoisier plays this situation partly for laughs, partly for poignancy, but keeps it rough-edged, casting enthusiastic, extremely convincing non-professionals. Faveau \u2014 ruddy, rangy and entirely uninhibited \u2014 is a terrific find, as is Ma\u00efw\u00e8ne Barth\u00e9l\u00e9my as the more worldly-wise tough girl from the neighbouring dairy farm.The film manages to make Totone oddly likeable despite his flaws. He is irresponsible, exploitative, sometimes thuggish; an abusive lover, and a thief who lets his friends abet him, then lands them in deep water. But, as played by Faveau, he is a genuine picaresque anti-hero, exuding the sweaty, flustered energies of life.From the minutiae of cheesemaking to the uproar of the climactic stock car race, Holy Cow is a prime example of the way that French realist filmmakers tend to roll their sleeves up and plunge deep into the lore and the mores of their chosen subjects (Courvoisier is herself from Jura, with several family members involved, including a brother and her parents collaborating on the sparse, lyrical score). This is not necessarily an outstanding or unusual production as contemporary French realism goes, but it is robust, enjoyable and unsentimental \u2014 the good stuff, raw and unpasteurised.\u2605\u2605\u2605\u2605\u2606In cinemas now<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Stay informed with free updatesSimply sign up to the Film myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.The French expression \u201cVingt dieux!\u201d (\u201cTwenty gods!\u201d) essentially means \u201cBloody hell!\u201d As the title of Louise Courvoisier\u2019s debut feature, it has been translated as Holy Cow \u2014<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":271260,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-271259","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-culture"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/271259","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=271259"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/271259\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":271261,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/271259\/revisions\/271261"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/271260"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=271259"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=271259"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=271259"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}