Meursault’s mother recently died, but it hardly seems to phase him. The French-Algerian settler’s lack of apparent grief is most definitely noticed by the residents of her retirement home—and they will remember it later. Returning to Algiers as if nothing had happened, Meursault spends a day at the beach, where h rekindles a relationship with Marie Cardona, a former co-worker. She clearly considers him a potential future husband, but for Meursault, it is clearly just sex to break up his boredom.
Similarly, Meursault “befriends,” or rather passes the time with his thuggish neighbor Raymond Sintes, because his abusive behavior towards his Arab Algerian lover means nothing to the younger man. However, the vendetta launched by the battered woman’s brother will eventually precipitate a moment of feverish violence that forever changes Meursault’s fate.
So, yes, this is The Stranger. Plus, Ozon incorporates the narrative of Camus’s The Misunderstanding, which Meursault reads in an old newspaper and philosophically expounds upon when Cardona visits him in prison. Yet, whether Camus would approve of Meursault’s interpretation is highly debatable.
Indeed, Ozon suddenly loses the plot during the third act, while Meursault awaits a ruling on his appeal. Meursault is supposed to exist outside conventional emotions and social niceties. (Indeed, the novel’s title has sometimes been translated as The Outsider.) He truly lacks the ability to forge human connections and feels no inclination to fake it. There is something unknowable about Meursault. He is simply different (and perversely, perhaps more honest) than the rest of us.
At least that is Camus’s Meursault. In a radical departure from the novel, Ozon suggests late in the eleventh hour that Meursault’s extreme existential aloofness was largely a function of early life trauma. Just like that, the unknowable becomes easy to grasp—arguable even trite and cliched. The “Stranger” is back in the human fold, which irreparable softens the film’s impact, making it all safely digestible.
It is a shame, because Ozon’s The Stranger could have potentially ranked as the greatest Camus film produced to date. The bracing early discipline, from both Ozon and lead actor Bejamin Voisin, is boldly true to Camus’s vision. Manuel Dacosse’s stark black-and-white cinematography also perfectly suits the story, like a sunny film noir. Truly, every shot was painstakingly composed by Ozon—so much so, true cineastes will find themselves marveling at the film’s austere beauty.
Voisin is also perfectly cast as Meursault. Despite his high-profile work in Apple TV+’s Careme, he is largely an unknown quantity in the United States and therefore carries no baggage into the film (unlike Marcello Mastroianni in Visconti’s 1967 adaptation). Again, “discipline” is a word that aptly applies to his performance, as well as “brooding intensity.”
Frustratingly, The Stranger comes maddeningly close to perfect, before deliberately sabotaging itself. By explaining away Meursault’s anti-social aloofness, Ozon cheapens the character and his fate. That is a shame. Recommended for its rigorous artistry, but with considerable caveats due to its untimely cop-out, The Stranger opens in theaters April 3rd, following its New York premiere at this year’s Rendez-Vous.
