Du Soleil pour les Gueux

Judging by this and the later Real Cool Time, Guiraudie is a mercurial talent with a penchant for creating strange worlds. This, far more than its successor, is genuinely eccentric: set on the causses of Languedoc (the region's dry windswept grazing plateaux), it's an absurdist fable about a woman in search of a shepherd who, when she finds him, has lost his improbably dangerous flock; meanwhile, they keep meeting a bandit unable to flee the region despite being pursued by a merciless bounty hunter. There's much running hither and thither, much digressive sophistry and frequent sight-gags - but what it's finally all about is up for grabs. Engrossing and funny, though, and reminiscent of Candide, Jarry and Beckett, with a little Keaton thrown in for good measure.