The none–too–graceful murder of an amateur baseball player sets in motion this pitch–black comedy about the thin line between dignity and defeat. Ripstein, who was awarded the Festival's Akira Kurosawa Award in 1999, displays the sharp social/critical eye of his mentor Buñuel and the slapstick humanism of Beckett: he's funny, he's sad, and often he makes you wonder what exactly separates the two. Both entertaining and genuinely moving, a signature work by one of cinema's great and prickly talents.