If you thought the sudden move of French director Burno Dumont from austere drama to increasingly wacky comedy in the TV miniseries P'tit Quinquin and last year’s farce Slack Bay was a shock, prepare yourself for Jeannette, an electro-musical dance film on the adolescent life of Joan of Arc. Opening with little Jeannette (Lise Leplat Prudhomme) humming prayers to herself along the river Meuse (in fact, Dumont re-locates the story to his beloved northern France), suddenly the music swells, she belts one out—”there is nothing, there is never anything, but perdition!”—and ends it all with a handspring and splits. “Why do you do that?” asks a passing child, but the answer is obvious: lonesome, poor, in love with charity and full of doubts, Jeannette bounds with childhood’s pent up energy and calls forth her questions, protests and passion in bodily, soulful fervor. With this beginning, Dumont...