Since its initial publication eighty-some years ago, The Stranger has remained to be Albert Camus’s most popular work, and one that frankly gets easier to understand over the years. The concept of indifference, which contributed to the novel’s absurdist classification, can be now dissected scientifically and psychologically, shared in comfortable terms in communities, discussed in therapeutic settings, or reiterated in other voices and narratives. But there will be an innate curiosity to see it on the screen from those who had read the novel at an impressionable age, or a more digestive-mature mind, and this version of The Stranger (L’Étranger in French) may be for that audience.

The story is told in a first-person perspective from Frenchman Meursault in the 1930s, who first informs the audience that his mother is dead with little emotion behind it. To portray him in a non-contrived way is the bare minimum, but the skill to acknowledge and carry the balance of first-and-second act empathy ramped up to a charged third act is easier said than done. I don’t particularly envy those who are tasked with such a role, but alas, Benjamin Voisin rises to the challenge. It’s a sparse performance of Voisin walking through the streets of a French-colonized Algerian town in a well-fitted suit, muted to declarations of love and anger. It’s enough lean muscle to support the imagery of Camus’s imaginatively beautiful character with little empathy, and such as the response to the book itself, I don’t know if one would feel moved by this representation of Meursault. It’s not Voisin’s fault per se, because it feels like what The Stranger should look and feel like in a groomed, polished state.

For seasoned director François Ozon, who bravely tackled adapting The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant not too long ago, I don’t imagine that the pressure of correct adaptation gets him shaking in his boots. In fact, L’Étranger is as sure and stylistic as an European model spread would look, if sleek bodies against a colonialist backdrop is part of Tom Ford’s Spring/Summer collection. It is as ambitiously pretty as cinematic ennui could get, and largely stays within the margins of Camus’s work (one scene, in which Meursault conjures a dream of slowly walking up to a guillotine on a hill, must be an intended relation to Camus’ The Myth of Sisyphus).

We can look at the vision that Ozon’s The Stranger abides by. The black-and-white depiction feels like a subtle nod to its diametric bleakness to the French New Wave, a convoluted whirlwind of love, self-worth, and emotions that Meursault could not feel. His easier pursuits of instant gratification within the colonialist settlement where Arab Algerians are openly mocked and cursed at on the streets, which make for a dissociative privilege that can be read between the lines. Voisin is attractive enough to invoke some feelings from the audience, but dangerously so that there is possibility for an excuse for his actions (there is a good chance that Camus could have not foreseen Tumblr fanbases for school shooters).

Either in book or film, I’d often want to transpose Meursault’s inner thoughts onto Camus’s life, which was a lot more glamorous and scandalized than any sort of future that Meursault could have fathomed having. While Ozon does well to present The Stranger as loud and quiet, or as moving and still, as much as it could, I’m not sure if this revival satisfies any sort of calling, or gives anything more about than what Camus has already given us. However, in some way, its benign indifference might be a grand chess move.

The Stranger (L’Étranger)
2025
dir. François Ozon
122 min.

Opens Friday, 4/17 @ Coolidge Corner Theatre