{"id":1441,"date":"2025-04-14T17:57:22","date_gmt":"2025-04-14T22:57:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newscreen.richardlohr.com\/blog\/?p=1441"},"modified":"2025-04-21T18:22:50","modified_gmt":"2025-04-21T23:22:50","slug":"holy-cow-thursday-april-17th","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newscreen.richardlohr.com\/blog\/2025\/04\/14\/holy-cow-thursday-april-17th\/","title":{"rendered":"Holy Cow. Thursday, April 24th."},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"padding:56.25% 0 0 0;position:relative;\"><iframe src=\"https:\/\/player.vimeo.com\/video\/1075333511?badge=0&amp;autopause=0&amp;player_id=0&amp;app_id=58479\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"autoplay; fullscreen; picture-in-picture; clipboard-write; encrypted-media\" style=\"position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;\" title=\"Small Things Like These (2024) trailer\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p><script src=\"https:\/\/player.vimeo.com\/api\/player.js\"><\/script><\/p>\n\n\n<p>Original Title: Vingt dieux<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Color \/ French Language \/ English Subtitles \/ MPA rating: Not rated \/ Runtime: 92 min<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A celebration of young love and artisanal cheese-making, this micro-budget French drama became a \u00a35 million box office smash on home soil, where it\u2019s outperformed Oscar-winning heavyweights such as Anora, The Substance and The Brutalist. Only in France, you might shrug. Yet Holy Cow could charm anyone, even the most die-hard cheese-hater.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The setting is a sunlit, hardscrabble farming community in the Jura mountains. Here 18-year-old Totone (Cl\u00e9ment Favreau) is a freckle-faced scamp whose carefree days of beer, girls, fights, fags and more beer hit a wall when his father dies, leaving him penniless and responsible for his seven-year-old sister (Luna Garret). Soon, Totone comes up with an unusual solution. Despite a total lack of expertise, he will enter a comt\u00e9-making competition and win the \u20ac30,000 prize.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>You can predict the entire movie already, right? The comedy cow moments, the cutesy sibling bonding, the nail-biting climax at the snooty cheese championships \u2026 However, Holy Cow delights by swerving most of those generic story beats while still serving up a feelgood ending that fully satisfies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The secret ingredient here is authenticity. The director Louise Courvoisier was herself raised on a farm in the Jura region and has realised her assured, multi-award-winning debut with a largely non-professional cast. Favreau, her lead, is a former poultry farmer, whom she had to beg to perform a role that has since won him the Lumi\u00e8re award for most promising actor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Immersed in rural, working-class culture, the action is v\u00e9rit\u00e9 and honest without being bleak. Courvoisier shoots in a way that\u2019s unfiltered \u2014 literally, given her use of natural light. You can practically feel that cool misty air, that hot sun on your skin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Her vivid film is so alive you may believe you could even reach out and touch it \u2014 or eat it. Yet this isn\u2019t glossy holiday porn or foodie porn any more than it is misery porn. Those mountain vistas are ravishing; they are also wonderfully wild.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A heartwarming coming-of-age story about a raw boy slowly ripening to manhood, this impressively mature debut is earthy, compassionate and never too cheesy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Review by Larushka Ivan-Zadeh, for The Times of London<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt32086034\/?ref_=nv_sr_1?ref_=nv_sr_1\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"44\" height=\"20\" src=\"https:\/\/newscreen.richardlohr.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/imdb.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-43\"\/><\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Original Title: Vingt dieux Color \/ French Language \/ English Subtitles \/ MPA rating: Not rated \/ Runtime: 92 min A celebration of young love and artisanal cheese-making, this micro-budget French drama became a \u00a35 million box office smash on home soil, where it\u2019s outperformed Oscar-winning heavyweights such as Anora, The Substance and The Brutalist. &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/newscreen.richardlohr.com\/blog\/2025\/04\/14\/holy-cow-thursday-april-17th\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Holy Cow. Thursday, April 24th.<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1444,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1441","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-movies","category-trailers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newscreen.richardlohr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1441","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newscreen.richardlohr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newscreen.richardlohr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newscreen.richardlohr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newscreen.richardlohr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1441"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/newscreen.richardlohr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1441\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1450,"href":"https:\/\/newscreen.richardlohr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1441\/revisions\/1450"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newscreen.richardlohr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1444"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newscreen.richardlohr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1441"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newscreen.richardlohr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1441"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newscreen.richardlohr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1441"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}