Vingt Dieux: Darkness and Light in the Heart of France

France has a good number of breathtaking regions, in addition to its capital and famous cities. Many of us have visited Brittany, Provence, Alsace, Normandy. Some destinations are so touristy we forget there are real communities located there. Vingt Dieux, directed by Louise Courvoisier, offers two immediate treats: A portrait of a lovely but lesser-known region, Franche-Comté. Second, a cold-eyed perusal of the agricultural sector there (the region is known for one of France’s most beloved cheeses, Comté). 

The film stars Clément Faveau as Totone, a young man living in a hardscrabble farm family that’s missing a mother. It’s not clear what happened to her, but the father’s having a hard time of it. At first Totone doesn’t seem engaged with farm life, and we can imagine him joining the hordes of young people abandoning the countryside and agriculture for cities, banlieues or the no-man’s-lands that gave rise to the yellow-vest movement. But his anomie is upended by another loss, after his father gets drunk at a country fair and crashes his vehicle. Totone is left alone with his young sister Claire (Luna Garret). Though he seems happy-go-lucky in the best of times, and sells the family tractor for needed cash, he’s determined to care for his sister, and to stay on the farm (and by extension his home village). 

He tries to find work, but without much formal education or experience his prospects are nil. He eventually lands a job in a milk-production facility. This is complicated by the fact that he’d had a violent run-in with two brothers also working there, further complicated by falling for their sister Marie-Lise (Maïwène Barthelemy), and complicated even more by stealing milk supplies from her when he decides to set up his own cheese-production business. 

So far, so grim. But amid the rustic darkness there is also light. Totone remains devoted to his sister, and somehow his relationship with Marie-Lise survives. His cheese-making idea gains momentum and he decides to try for a blue-ribbon in a competition. The scenes of churning and preparing the cheese are eye-opening. It’s gloriously artisanal, but hard (and sometimes dangerous) work. If on one hand he resorts to some necessary shadiness, he also appeals for guidance from an older cheese master, which not only shows his honest-apprentice side, but poignantly evokes his need for a parental figure. 

While a lot goes on in Vingt Dieux, Totone is the undeniable center of the film. Faveau acts with enormous authority even when his character seemingly possesses no authority whatsoever. His pale blemishy skin and blond hair evoke boyishness, a vulnerable French version of Huck Finn. But he’s not as vulnerable as all that. He’s a scrappy survivor, capable of brawling and bellowing in frustration. Faveau recalls a young Sean Penn, except that it sometimes seemed Penn was brilliantly portraying himself. Faveau also acts brilliantly, but he doesn’t yet seem to know what being an actor means — there’s no self-consciousness. 

While Totone isn’t always angelic, he keeps our sympathy partially because the other male characters, his buds and antagonists, seem so repulsive. This supporting cast supports through sheer contrast. More sympathetic are the female characters. At first Marie-Lise seems sullen, needy and undesirable. But she turns sullenness into weird charm, neediness into integrity, and undesirability into jolie moche sensuality. Luna Garrett as the little sister has a magnetic charm of her own right from the start, even when she comes off as a miniaturized 35-year-old. 

The movie is cleanly, sometimes sumptuously, directed by Ms. Courvoisier. It’s hard to believe that it’s the director’s first feature, or that she’s only 30 years old. She films with the assurance of someone with twice her experience. (Her film has been featured at numerous festivals, including Cannes, and either won or been nominated for several awards.) She only gives her callowness away with the music soundtrack. The pieces she’s chosen are interesting, if not inspired (these choices often have to do with money, rights, etc). But one treacly ballad, in English, defeats the purpose of bringing us the warts-and-all specificity of the region. 

The director has an unusual background. Her parents are baroque musicians of Swiss, Canadian, and German origin who settled on a French farm. She herself was born in Switzerland but grew up in the Jura, a department in the Franche-Comté region. This accounts for her insider/outsider perspective: empathy for the region and its agricultural milieu, but with an anthropologist’s objectivity and interest in the social dimension of her chosen subject. 

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Vingt Dieux is firmly rooted in the film social, a worthy genre featuring great directors like the Dardennes brothers and Robert Guédiguian. It might have turned out staidly earnest, but Ms. Courvoisier has a quirky side that gives her film freshness. She swivels her interest late in the story to Totone’s stock-car-driving friend, and signals his and Marie-Lise’s reconciliation with a startling flash of public semi-nudity. (It book-ends another nudie-cutie shot early on.)

Even the title is quirky. At first glance you might think it’s vingt-deux (22), which could be Totone’s age. It’s in fact vingt dieux, literally “twenty gods”, apparently a local epithet that evokes both antique religiosity and earthy blasphemy. This has been miserably translated (despite the link with dairy) as Holy Cow. The first part of that is alright. Sub the second with the expletive of your choice, and that will give a better idea of the earthly delights of Vingt Dieux. 

Production: Agat Films & Cie/Ex Nihilo

Distribution: Pyramide Distribution