Rendez-Vous ’26: The Stranger

Albert Camus never revealed his first name, but the character known simply as Meursault introduced generations of high school students to the concept of existentialism. If you haven’t read The Stranger, then you shame your school district. By its nature, Camus’s novel has bedeviled attempted film adaptations, but Francois Ozon finally embraces its philosophical and psychological essence (at least until he suddenly doesn’t) in The Stranger, which was the opening night film of the 2026 Rendez-Vous with French Cinema.

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.”

Tribeca ’15: Far from Men

Nobel Prize Laureate Albert Camus is associated with existentialism, but he was really a determined foe of all totalitarian “isms.” He is also closely linked to his Algerian birthplace, with good reason. In addition to his celebrated novels The Plague, The Stranger, and the posthumously published but still quite good The First Man, Camus’s most anthologized short story, “The Guest,” is also set in Algeria. Screen-writer-director David Oelhoffen thoughtfully but not entirely faithfully adapts Camus’s story as Far from Men (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York, following its U.S. premiere at the 2015 Tribeca Film Festival.

Daru is a former military officer trying to make amends for his mysterious past by serving as a school teacher in a remote village. The meditative life seems to suit him, but it will be rudely interrupted by Balducci, the gendarme. Whether he wants to or not, Daru has been tasked with escorting Balducci’s Algerian prisoner to the nearest French outpost in Tinguit, where he will likely be executed. That night, Daru makes it clear to the man named Mohamed, he is welcome to escape at any time. However, the admitted murder seems perversely intent of facing French justice. He does indeed have his reasons, which constitute some unusually smart writing on Oelhoffen’s part.

Unfortunately, Mohamed family did not have the blood money to buy peace after he justifiably killed his cousin. As a result, Daru will find himself in the middle of an intra-family feud, as well as increasingly violent uprising led by many of his former Algerian army colleagues. Fortunately, Daru is a crack shot with a rifle, because he will have to shoot his way out of a lot of trouble.

Essentially, Oelhoffen trades the icy cold irony of the Camus story for the tragic sweep of a revisionist Algerian western. Cinematographer Guillaume Deffontaines fully exploits the craggy terrain’s epic big sky country possibilities. After playing the Gloomy Gus in self-consciously arty films like Jauja and Everybody has a Plan, Viggo Mortensen finally finds the right vehicle for his simmering tough guy intensity. It also further burnishes his polyglot chops, this time showcasing him in French. Reda Ketab’s performance as Mohamed is almost too impassive as Mohamed, but it still sort of works for a pseudo western, in the moody Anthony Mann tradition.

Frankly, Far from Men is exactly the kind of film the pretentious Jauja should have been, but so wasn’t. It critically engages with a lot of hot button issues, including colonialism and tribalism, but never at the expense of its lean and mean narrative. Visually striking and tightly disciplined, Far from Men is recommended for fans of Mortensen and historical drama when it opens this Friday (5/1) in New York at the Cinema Village, following hard on the heels of its well-received screenings at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival.