France is worried about its frustrated young men. At the recent Rendezvous with French Cinema in New York, three films explored the plight of male youth with no future, brimming with rampant, often misdirected energy. Sisters Delphine and Muriel Coulin’s earnest The Quiet Son stars Vincent Lindon as a working-class father desperately trying to keep his eldest child (Benjamin Voisin) out of the clutches of a right-wing gang. Brothers Ludovic and Zoran Boukherma directed And Their Children After Them, a melodramatic but moving story of two adolescent boys caught in a wild cycle of revenge and violence. Louise Courvoisier’s coming-of-age story Holy Cow treads some of the same dangerous ground but lands as the most naturalistic (and optimistic) of the three.

Totone (Clément Faveau) lives in the Jura, a milk-farming region of picturesque views, hard work, and little money. The redheaded teenager has a Tintin forelock, a cheeky, impudent face, and a chip on his shoulder. Stripping off his clothes for a goading, howling crowd at the village fair and picking ill-advised brawls, Totone seems headed for trouble—until trouble finds him. After a hell-raising night on the town, Totone and his friends come across the wreckage of a car holding the dead body of his drunk-driving father. Director Courvoisier wisely underplays Totone’s shaken reaction, letting it sink in that the boy is about to face a whole new set of realities.

The next part of the film follows Totone’s struggle to survive. He must take care of his little sister and earn enough money to keep their household afloat, working for dairy farmers who already bear a grudge against him after a fairground fight. Beyond these subsistence challenges, Totone faces other tests of maturity: He’s attracted to a farm girl in the dairy circle and will need to refrain from treating her like dirt. He also has to master her skills and earn her trust. The growth of their matter-of-fact yet tender, playful rapport is one of the film’s sweet spots, along with its charming but unsentimental depiction of life in the Jura’s verdant great outdoors.

The film’s focus expands with a crackpot scheme undertaken by Totone and his friends to win a multi-euro Comté cheese competition. Without giving away the outcome, the contest serves more as a vehicle to showcase the protagonist’s drive and big heart than as a serious endeavor. The device is satisfying, though—Totone has worked, grown, and, by this point, viewers have developed a real warmth for a character who started off abrasive. Although its pace is unhurried, Holy Cow moves with the urgency of someone forced to grow up fast and keep the damage to a minimum.