“The Stranger” Proves Just As Elliptical As Its Source

The Stranger (François Ozon, 2025) 3½ out of 5 stars

French author Albert Camus’ short 1942 novel The Stranger follows the story of an aimless young man who commits a murder for reasons unclear even to him and then pays the ultimate price for it, all the while shrugging his shoulders at the world. Set in colonial Algeria—where Camus (1913-1960) was himself born—the book deals seemingly tangentially with the cultural, racial, and class issues engendered by imperialist occupations, while more overtly examining how ennui and existential angst affect behavior. Ultimately, however, the two threads are inextricably linked. Oppression and inequality breed discontent in all who are part of their structure.

Now adapted for the screen for the third time by French director François Ozon (By the Grace of God), the story retains its elliptical allure while benefitting from updates that address some of its 20^th-century attitudes, granting greater agency to its women and Arab characters than does the original. Camus, from a working-class background and not (originally) part of the ruling elite (though he would win the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1957, by which point he was a sought-after thinker), was writing within a context indelibly familiar to him. In his own The Stranger, Ozon brings that time and place to vivid life—though with the same world-weariness of the source text—aided in his recreation by a top-notch cast and gorgeous black-and-white cinematography from Director of Photography Manuel Dacosse (Vincent Must Die).

Benjamin Voisin (The Mad Women’s Ball) plays Meursault, a twentysomething Frenchman living in Algiers, working at a job that fails to inspire much of anything in him. Not even the death of his mother that opens the movie has much of an effect on his affect, one of profound indifference. Nor does the affair on which he embarks with a casual acquaintance, Marie (Rebecca Marder, Simone: Woman of the Century), change his outlook on life, though at least the sex is good (she seems to like it, anyway).

A far more engaged French settler is Meursault’s neighbor, Sintès (Pierre Lottin, When Fall Is Coming), though this man’s way of displaying energy is by mistreating his Arab girlfriend, Djemila (Hajar Bouzaouit, Le Mont Moussa)—whose pimp he may be, according to some—and generally being the kind of colonial boor who reinforces in obvious ways the evils of the enterprise. Meursault and he start spending more time together, one thing leads to another, and suddenly our protagonist, in possession of a gun (courtesy of Sintès), shoots Djemila’s brother, Moussa (Abderrahmane Dehkani). Why? As staged here, with possible homoerotic overtones, it could be the hot sun that puts the idea in his head. Or perhaps he just wanted to try something different. Whatever the reason, a man is dead.

Normally, in French Algeria, this might result in a minor penalty; white folks’ lives are worth more and Arabs die all the time. But something in Meursault’s disregard for the niceties of convention and his refusal to show remorse—first for his mother’s passing and now this—rub everyone the wrong way. We must follow certain rules, after all.

The French have a terribly racist expression for whites who were born in Africa during their colonization of the continent: pieds-noirs (“black feet”). This tells you all you need to know about how the system treats its indigenous subjects. But in the title of the novel—in French, “L’Étranger,” which can translate just as easily as “The Foreigner”—is embedded the notion that Meursault is twice an outsider, and thereby unable to be wholly himself. When offered a job opportunity in Paris, he balks. That’s not home; Algiers is. But is it really?

There are no easy answers to meaning here, and Voisin is the perfect vessel for such an unformed person, his good lucks and charm in service of a deep well of emptiness within. Lottin is his complete opposite, playing Sintès as much more of a coarse monster full of joie de vivre. Marder’s Marie may have a bigger role than in the novel, but we could still use more of her, as we could of both Bouzaouit and Dehkani. It’s not entirely satisfying as a modern interpretation, but it contains all the power of Camus’s philosophical musings plus striking visuals, including a final frame that returns the narrative to the native population. The Stranger may remain detached, but it thoroughly engages the mind and eyes.