Holy Cow Review: Rural Cheesemaking and Unexpected Sweetness

Is Holy Cow good?

Yes — Holy Cow is one of the strongest-reviewed films on our list, backed by a 98 Celluloid Editorial Rating, an 83 Metascore, and warm marks from both Letterboxd (3.7) and IMDb (7.0). That kind of alignment between critical and specialist audiences is rare, and it points to a film that works on craft and feeling at once rather than one or the other. The more modest 75 Audience Snapshot suggests general viewers respond well too, if slightly less rapturously than the critics reviewing it professionally.

What is Holy Cow about?

Holy Cow follows a teenager forced to grow up overnight when tragedy upends his family. After his father’s sudden death, eighteen-year-old Totone finds himself responsible for his younger sibling and the family’s livelihood, with no real preparation for either. Rather than lean into melodrama, the film roots his coming-of-age in the specific, physical world of rural French cheesemaking, using the discipline and stakes of a local competition as the backdrop for his stumbling, sincere attempt to hold everything together.

Should you watch Holy Cow?

Yes, especially if you’re drawn to quiet, character-driven dramas that earn their emotion rather than demand it. With a first-time-heavy cast and a director working in an observational register, Holy Cow trades plot momentum for accumulated detail — the textures of farm labor, the awkwardness of grief, the small gestures that stand in for words a teenager doesn’t have yet. The 145-minute runtime asks for patience, but the consistency of its scores across critics and audiences alike suggests that patience is repaid.

How does Holy Cow compare to Little Forest?

Viewers who loved Little Forest, the South Korean film about a young woman returning to her rural hometown and finding stability through the seasonal rhythms of farming and cooking, will find a kindred spirit in Holy Cow. Both films treat manual, agricultural labor as a form of emotional processing rather than mere setting, and both resist the urge to manufacture conflict where none is needed — the drama comes from circumstance, not contrivance. Where Little Forest is meditative and largely solitary, Holy Cow is messier and more communal, filtering its grief through sibling responsibility and the unglamorous pressure of a competition deadline. Fans of either should find plenty to recognize in the other.