{"id":393579,"date":"2025-09-03T03:48:11","date_gmt":"2025-09-03T03:48:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/393579\/"},"modified":"2025-09-03T03:48:11","modified_gmt":"2025-09-03T03:48:11","slug":"francois-ozons-laborious-camus-adaptation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/393579\/","title":{"rendered":"Fran\u00e7ois Ozon’s Laborious Camus Adaptation"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tFirst published in 1942, Albert Camus\u2019 The Stranger<\/a> \u2014 also known as The Outsider \u2014 was a popular fashion accessory in the post-punk \u201970s, being heavy in content and light enough in weight to carry around in the pockets of the overcoats worn by devotees of the British band Joy Division. That it was what you might nowadays call \u201ca quick read\u201d undoubtedly contributed to its popularity, and its troubled hero spoke volumes to moody, rebellious teenagers who\u2019d moved on from Catcher in the Rye. Around the same time, it gave proto-goth band The Cure an early hit in the form of \u201cKilling an Arab\u201d, which perfectly distilled the themes and narrative of the novel into two minutes and 21 seconds of art-rock.<\/p>\n

\n\tBy contrast, The Stranger \u2014 the latest film from Fran\u00e7ois Ozon<\/a>, a French director as protean and prolific as America\u2019s Richard Linklater \u2014 is a perfectly crafted but somewhat laborious stab at the book\u2019s dark heart; while it\u2019s very, very faithful, it somehow seems much more drawn out and much less economical. In its favor, though, it is incredibly stylish, a shimmering monochrome affair that looks like a brand-new silver nitrate print of a \u201940s melodrama. This being Ozon, however, there is also a mischievous flavor of homoeroticism, and, particularly in the prison scenes that open and punctuate it, it seems to owe a debt to Un Chant D\u2019Amour, the one only film directed by the literary outlaw Jean Genet in 1950.<\/p>\n

\n\tIt begins with newsreel footage of Algiers, touting the gentrification of the city under French rule. It is portrayed as a melting pot of cultures, but graffiti promoting the Algerian Liberation Front suggest the reality is not quite so harmonious. From there, we go to the local prison, where a young man is thrown into a cell with dozens of other, mostly dark-skinned men. \u201cWhat did you do?\u201d he is asked, in Arabic. \u201cI killed an Arab,\u201d he says, without any trace of emotion, which, of course, doesn\u2019t exactly make him Prisoner of the Week.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe young man is Meursault (Benjamin Voisin), and, in flashback, the film then reveals the chain of circumstance that has led him there, starting with the death of his mother, which was Camus\u2019 original opening gambit. As in the book, Meursault is unmoved by her passing, taking two days off work to grudgingly visit the rest home where he put her and sit with her coffin overnight. He\u2019s asked if he\u2019d like to see her one last time. No, he says. Why not? \u201cThere\u2019s no point.\u201d A day or so later he visits the local baths \u2014 Les Bains d\u2019Algiers \u2014 where he meets an old flame, Marie (Rebecca Marder), and they become lovers.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe events unfold just as they do in the novel, largely revolving around Meursault\u2019s curious stable of neighbors, notably Salamano (Denis Lavant), a crusty old man who loves but beats his equally mangey dog, and, more significantly, Raymond (Pierre Lottin), a pimp by any other name, who treats his women just as roughly. And it is Raymond\u2019s affair with an Arab woman named Djemila (Hajar Bouzaouit) that sends Meursault\u2019s life spinning out of control, when, for reasons he is later unable to explain, he shoots her brother five times after an altercation on the beach on a hot summer\u2019s day.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn the book, Camus explains all this through an engaging first-person narrative, but Ozon bins all that in favor of showing not telling. It\u2019s a bold gambit but one that doesn\u2019t quite work; Voisin certainly has a boyish charm, but the character\u2019s indifference is hard to get into, like when Marie suggests they get married. \u201cIf you want,\u201d he shrugs, but that\u2019s just the tip of the iceberg in terms of his (psycho) pathology. In literature, Meursault embodies the existentialist ideal: If you don\u2019t believe in anything, nothing matters, and the casual anarchy of that might sound sexy and fun, especially if you\u2019re young, disenfranchised and alienated or, let\u2019s face it, just French. On film, however, it quickly becomes kind of boring.<\/p>\n

\n\tBy contrast, though, this is one of Ozon\u2019s most strikingly beautiful films to date, and it would make a great faux-retro double bill with Richard Linklater\u2019s terrific Cannes hit Nouvelle Vague (weirdly, Linklater\u2019s film is arguably the most stereotypically French of the two, although, admittedly, someone does say \u201cOoh-la-la\u201d in Ozon\u2019s). The book, however, has a philosophical resonance that the film tries very hard to replicate but can\u2019t, culminating in a long discussion with a priest (Swann Arlaud) that makes the ending seem a hell of a long time coming. Ironically, The Cure\u2019s Robert Smith dealt with all this ennui in a simple lyric. \u201cWhichever I choose, it amounts to the same,\u201d he sang. \u201cAbsolutely nothing.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tTitle:<\/strong> The Stranger
Festival:<\/strong> Venice (Competition)
Director<\/strong>: Fran\u00e7ois Ozon
Screenwriter:<\/strong> Fran\u00e7ois Ozon, from the novel by Albert Camus
Cast:<\/strong> Benjamin Voisin, Rebecca Marder, Pierre Lottin, Denis Lavant, Swann Arlaud
Sales agent:<\/strong> Gaumont
Running time:<\/strong> 2 hrs 3 mins<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"First published in 1942, Albert Camus\u2019 The Stranger \u2014 also known as The Outsider \u2014 was a popular…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":393580,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3935],"tags":[77,136156,3943,6080,57295,16,15,126619],"class_list":{"0":"post-393579","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-franu00e7ois-ozon","10":"tag-movies","11":"tag-review","12":"tag-the-stranger","13":"tag-uk","14":"tag-united-kingdom","15":"tag-venice-film-festival"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115138324405120566","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/393579","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=393579"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/393579\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/393580"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=393579"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=393579"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=393579"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}