Bruno Dumont’s films are no stranger to George Eastman House, as the Dryden Theatre has previously hosted such austere ruminations on mortality and spirituality as Flanders (Grand Prix, Cannes Film Festival), Hadewijch, and Camille Claudel 1915. These films—plus works such as The Life of Jesus and Twentynine Palms—cemented Dumont’s status as a true enfant terrible of French cinema, a radical talent whose uncompromising vision has attracted admirers and naysayers of equal ferocity. But now the 57-year-old writer-director has delivered what may prove his masterwork, a film which nearly all commentators have hailed with unalloyed praise. Dumont deftly executes a stunning left-field turn into darkly hilarious comedy with his made-for-TV epic—a surprise ratings hit in its native land—which borrows equally from David Lynch’s Twin Peaks and Jacques Tati’s Monsieur Hulot. When a bumbling police-detective (an astonishing physical performance by Bernard Pruvost) arrives in a small seaside town to investigate a bizarre murder, he rubs up against a band of urchins led by the irrepressible, eponymous Quinquin (Cagney-esque newcomer Alane Delhaye) the starting point for an audacious and unpredictable journey into the more bizarre corners of French society and the human psyche.