'Holy Cow' review

Review by In the Frame critic Riley Thompson.

As part of our In the Frame program, five emerging film critics had the opportunity to watch, reflect on and review films in the Perth Festival Lotterywest Films 2024 – 25 season.

What do cheese, coming-of-age films and transness have in common? Not much really, but perhaps the string (cheese) tying them together can be found in the process of maturation. In Holy Cow, cheese is more than just a plot device, it becomes a metaphor for the slow and deeply personal process of maturing. The story follows 18-year-old Totone as he attempts to make a prize-winning cheese to support his family. Unsurprisingly, his first attempt is inedible, but a more experienced cheesemaker assures him that “the texture is good, it’s just too young”. Totone, like his cheese, has all the right ingredients – he just needs a little time. In this way, the film captures a familiar coming-of-age narrative: a boy on the cusp of adulthood, trying to figure out how to become a man. 

I have always been a sucker for coming-of-age films, specifically ones with male storylines. I never really knew why – maybe my Dad showed me too many John Hughes movies at a young age. It wasn’t until recently when certain personal things occurred that I realised I loved traditional storylines about boyhood because I never had a traditional boyhood. I grew up as a girl even though I ‘self-identified’ as a tomboy. I would run around without a shirt on, exclusively wore cargo shorts, my favourite movie was Star Wars and most of my t-shirts had Spiderman on them. Let's just say my parents weren’t particularly shocked when I came out. 

Of course, things all changed when I entered puberty. I felt like an entire section of my identity was ripped from me without my permission. I didn’t have the words to describe why I felt this way until many years later, but as one Reddit user put it: “I experienced the worst dysphoria as a teenager when people stopped treating me as a kid and started treating me as a girl.” When I finally learnt about trans people later on, I felt a massive disconnect with my teenage years while also yearning for my childhood. I was so incredibly free … until I wasn’t. This disconnect has been felt by many trans people, some even describe it as grief – “the grief isn’t really from any one thing you miss out on. It’s the alienation. The sense that things happened to a group you’re supposed to be a part of, but not you, and that makes you different in a way you can’t undo.” Or rather, in cheese terms: your ingredients were right, but the aging process happened in the wrong environment. 

Films – specifically coming-of-age films – that explore themes of boyhood like Holy Cow, resonate with transmasculine* audiences by allowing them to connect to a traditional boyhood they didn’t experience. These films create a space for all individuals to reflect on their identity, masculinity and self-discovery journeys, but this is particularly important for transmasculine people as these topics have governed much of their lives. In a research article looking into how trans men react to their representation on screen, one participant said “we are starving, anything will do”. This desperation for true representation was instead found by participants in cisgendered heteronormative narratives that didn’t even include trans characters. The participants explained that trans storylines on screen are only used to explain the concept of “transgender to straight people and to add conflict to a storyline”, rather than actually provide any genuine representation that catered toward a trans audience. Holy Cow highlights many aspects of boyhood that transmasculine individuals may be grieving or yearning for, like the sense of comradery between mates or being allowed to display desire without shame. Through Totone, transmasculine audiences can see themselves and access a boyhood they likely did not experience as a teen. 

What’s more is many coming-of-age movies tell tales of rebellion against tangible things like parents or school, which represent a broader social structure that seeks to keep young people in line. Extrapolating from that, this also applies to the trans experience – our very existence is a rebellion against cisgender heteronormative social structures that are designed to keep all humans contained and in a box. In a paper about trans men and their ‘boyish aesthetics’, the author argued that “the figure of the boy challenges the patriarchal signifier of ‘the Man’” by means of the boy’s revolt against “hegemonic forms of masculinity and adult expectations of adulthood”. I would argue that this captures Totone’s essence as well, even though he is canonically a cisgendered character. His physical appearance is very boyish with blushed cheeks and a slim build. Hegemonic masculinity uses one’s economic power and authority as a measure of one’s masculinity, but Totone has no money and no authoritative prowess, not even over his younger sister who he is the guardian of. Though he may try to act tough, he is a sensitive boy still ripening – like his cheese, not yet fully formed but full of potential. And it’s in that stage of becoming that so many transmasculine viewers find recognition. 

In the end, Holy Cow is not just a quirky French film about cheese – it’s a meditation on the messy, beautiful process of becoming. For transmasculine audiences, that process is already intricate and arduous, but it is further complicated by the loss of a boyhood never lived. But because of beautiful films like Holy Cow, we as audience members are able to find ourselves in stories where we were never meant to exist. Totone’s journey, with all its fumbling and tenderness, cracks open a space where that yearning and grieving can breathe. His boyhood may be fictional and cisgendered, but it offers a version of masculinity rooted not in domination or success, but in care, vulnerability, and growth – the slow fermentation of self, like a young cheese finally given the time and space to age into something rich and authentic. And in that ageing process, transmasculine viewers might not just find recognition, but a kind of healing, too.

*I use the term transmasculine as an umbrella term for any genderqueer individuals who identify more with masculinity than femininity.