The Stranger
aka L'Étranger First screened and reviewed in October 2025
Director: François Ozon. Cast: Benjamin Voisin, Rebecca Marder, Pierre Lottin, Denis Lavant, Christophe Malavoy, Jean-Charles Clichet, Hajar Bouzaouit, Swann Arlaud. Screenplay: François Ozon (based on the novel by Albert Camus). In Brief:
Several positives—the lensing, the star turn, the unslavish fealty to Camus—don't always interact well. Deadly pace.
VOR:③
Several sturdy legacies and contributions are possible: as a gift to new readers or old devotees of Camus, to stylish adaptation, to cinematography.
I'm not going to turn my nose up at gifts like the incredible beauty of Manuel Dacosse's sharp-edged, silvery-white cinematography for The Stranger or Benjamin Voisin's otherworldly beauty as Meursault, the spontaneous vigilante who knows not why he does what he does. I just can't say I'm sure how Camus's enduring parable necessarily profits from looking quite this stylish, even officiously composed, or from Meursault being proffered over and over for his fleshy charms in ways that suggest François Ozon is only half-connected to the larger story. The Stranger has such guts as a sparse, dangerous narrative and it raises enough points for reflection that even a handsome but middling restaging is time fairly spent. But in Ozon's hands, it's a repetitive experience, as cosmetic as it is earnestly philosophical, and it can't resist a finale that dials up the emotional heat incongruously high—as if the character but equally the filmmaker just can't commit all the way to that amoral, unarousable sangfroid that's the whole tale's raison d'être. Grade:C+
(I originally wrote this capsule on Letterboxd, where you can comment.)
