Lynch holds a place in my heart for getting me deeply into abstract film early on, and then greater cinema in general, though I haven't watched him in ages now and don't really feel drawn toward revisiting. I guess I could say he prepared me eventually for the likes of Tarkovsky, Bergman (easy to see parallels with Persona in his work, though there're echoes of that one all over), Hou Hsiao-Hsien, etc.

I've been meaning to watch Philippe Grandieux, who I've read compares well with Lynch.