A new take on Camus’ ‘The Stranger’ by a veteran French stylist digs unto the unspoken

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I’ve always loved the idea Camus presented in “The Stranger” – that we all experience the same basic life, but react to it in vastly different ways. Now, director François Ozon has taken on the challenge of adapting this classic, and he’s done a fantastic job. He’s stayed true to the novel’s haunting, minimalist style, capturing that same sense of detached mystery, but also smartly updated the story to feel relevant to today’s world. It’s a beautiful, thought-provoking film that really does justice to the source material.

The film opens with historical footage of Algeria when it was a French colony in the 1930s, immediately establishing a sense of bustling life alongside a clear distinction between the native population and colonizers. Director François Ozon continues the film in black and white, a stylistic choice that, like the recent “Ripley” series, creates a strikingly elegant and detached atmosphere. This rich monochrome enhances the beautifully filmed “Stranger,” captured by cinematographer Manu Dacosse, and draws the viewer into the enigmatic world of Meursault (played convincingly by Benjamin Voisin), an Algiers clerk who repeatedly expresses a sense of apathy – that nothing truly matters.

He handles his mother’s funeral with quiet stoicism, then quickly begins a passionate affair with Marie (Rebecca Marder), dismissing her attempts to commit to a serious relationship. He also doesn’t seem to care when his unpleasant neighbor (Denis Lavant) mistreats his dog, and is then surprised when the dog runs away and needs comforting.

Meursault’s carefree friendship with the unpleasant Raymond, who abuses his girlfriend Djemila, is what begins to disrupt his detached way of living. Invited by Raymond to the beach one Sunday, and suffering in the intense heat, Meursault unexpectedly shoots a young Arab man who had been trailing them. The act appears both random and potentially fueled by hidden emotional distress.

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Rather than trying to excuse himself, he fully accepts responsibility for his actions. It’s this honest portrayal of the senselessness of society, combined with Meursault’s rejection of traditional ideas about guilt and forgiveness, that makes “The Stranger” such a powerful and challenging work of literature.

Ozon presents the story with a cool, distant style that effectively draws us in. While the first half feels somewhat fragmented and fast-paced, the film truly shines in its later scenes, particularly when Meursault passionately rejects the attempts of a chaplain (Swann Arlaud) to offer him salvation. Following the success of recent French films like “Anatomy of a Fall” and “Saint Omer,” which powerfully depict the limitations of legal trials in understanding people, Ozon’s film highlights Camus’s pioneering exploration of these themes.

The director, working with Philippe Piazzo on the script, didn’t want to simply retell the story. He also felt the original novel’s handling of colonialism was troubling. So, he cleverly gave a voice to Djemila, the sister of the Algerian man who was killed – a character who wasn’t named in the book and was largely ignored. She tells Marie during the trial, “No one cares about my brother.” Ozon then has Marie make a bland statement about Algiers being “home,” which Djemila responds to with a slightly mocking laugh.

It’s a subtle but meaningful addition that feels perfectly natural, as if it was always part of this familiar story about life’s big questions, simply needing to be revealed.

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2026-04-12 21:15