Diary of a Shopkeeper, 8th February

Saturday night at the movies means the West Side Cinema in Stromness Town Hall. How could I resist a film about one of my favourite cheeses, Comté?

Comté is the best known and most loved of a group of mountain cheeses that straddle the French/Swiss border: Gruyère, Abondance, Tomme de Savoie, Beaufort. Emmental, from further inside Switzerland, is closely related. All are cow’s milk cheeses, all are pressed, and all are matured for many months before release. They can develop for anything from four months to two years, resulting in a firm Cheddar-like texture and wonderfully rich, nutty, buttery flavours. All are worth trying, but Comté is the one I return to over and over. It can be sliced in a sandwich, cubed in a salad, melted in a fondue or used in a hundred recipes.

The film, Holy Cow – Vingt Dieux in the original French – turned out to be anything but a serious documentary about cheesemaking. Rather, it was a rural romp, full of small adventures, big laughs, and a subtle portrayal of the growth of its youthful characters. It opens on the day of the local agricultural fair in a village in the Jura mountains in eastern France. I’ve never been to Jura, but I have been to the Dounby Show and the East Mainland Show many times, so immediately recognised the scenes of tractors, livestock, burger vans and beer tents.

The central character, 18-year-old Totone, is first glimpsed, drunk on lager, dancing outrageously for the benefit of his cheering friends. I would call him the film’s hero, but for most of the story his behaviour is decidedly unheroic. His life choices, as they say, are not always the wisest. To be fair, it’s not easy being Totone. His mother has long since gone and is never mentioned, his father dies in a road accident the night of the fair, and he’s left with responsibility for his seven-year-old sister, Claire. How to look after a wee girl when you’re a not much bigger boy? How to feed himself and her? How to earn some money after you’ve sold off all your father’s goods and gear, including his tractor?

Totone lands on the idea of making a prize-winning Comté cheese, for which he hears there’s a prize of 30,000 euros. His father was a fruitière – the local word for cheesemaker – but Totone was too preoccupied with scooters, beer and girls when his father was around to pay much attention. Nonetheless, he gives his all to the project, pulling in support and money from his reluctant friends. Bizarrely, he has to watch a ‘How to make Comté’ demonstration laid on for tourists to learn some of the basics. It’s a striking metaphor for how fragile local traditions can be lost from daily life while surviving as repackaged tourist attractions.

One of Totone’s better life decisions is to link up with a young dairy farmer called Marie-Lise. One of his worst decisions is to persuade his friends to steal the milk from Marie-Lise’s herd of Montbéliard cattle while he distracts her with his roguish charm. The audience gasped. Everyone wanted to shout the same thing at the screen: ‘No Totone! Don’t do it!’ But he does. He’s 18 and desperate, and hasn’t learned to think more than five minutes ahead. The odds are stacked against him.

That the writer-director, Marie Courvosier, manages to create redemption out of the wreckage is a tribute to her talent. It’s also a sign of how close she is to the farming community and its culture: like all her cast, she’s from the Jura mountains, and her portrayal of the area and its people is lyrical while remaining realistic, affectionate without being sentimental. I was reminded at times of the early films of Bill Forsyth, Gregory’s Girl and That Sinking Feeling. They were similarly at home in places entirely foreign to the Hollywood mentality, and also featured daft teenagers learning through painful but amusing trials how to be slightly less daft.

Making good quality Comté turned out to be a lot harder than Totone imagined. I wouldn’t put it past him and Marie-Lise managing it some day. When they do, we’ll be sure to have it in our fridge.

This diary appeared in The Orcadian on 12th February 2026. A new diary appears weekly. I post them in this blog a few days after each newspaper appearance, with added illustrations, and occasional small corrections or additions.