The films of writer-director Alain Guiraudie—who exploded on the international scene with his 2013 feature Stranger by the Lake—take us to a place out of time, roughly reflecting the years of the filmmaker’s coming of age through his maturity without attaching themselves to any particular contemporary period. Set in a rural France whose geological richness is essential to the atmosphere of his work, the class and vocational specificities of Guiraudie’s characters are enhanced by impulsive behaviors indulged in as a means of liberation.