A chilling reimagining of The Stranger gives the classic a black-and-white sheen
François Ozon's Albert Camus adaptation keeps the spirit of its stark source material alive.
Photo: Music Box Films
In François Ozon’s adaptation of Albert Camus’ The Stranger, colonialism, hypocrisy, and ennui boil under the Algerian sun, reviving a story about dispassionate violence for a new audience. In 1930s Algiers against the backdrop of French colonialism, Meursault (Benjamin Voisin) is a clerk whose mother has just passed away. After a tearless vigil and funeral, he goes to the beach to relax and pick things back up with a typist, Marie (Rebecca Marder). In the days following his mother’s funeral and his blossoming relationship, there’s still no sign of his emotions, either grief or joy. Instead, the young man only further withdraws from the outside world, walking past those who need help and those who want to be loved back. On his next trip to the beach, he follows his violent neighbor Raymond (Pierre Lottin) to confront some local men looking for revenge. When Meursault finally takes action—killing an Arab man with little provocation, it lands him on trial for his cruelty, pointing to his lack of remorse as evidence.
Camus’ The Stranger enjoyed a cinematic adaptation from master Italian filmmaker Luchino Visconti in 1967. Now, it’s as if Ozon set out not only to make a radically different version compared to his predecessor’s sunsoaked vision of a man lost in his thoughts, but even to make something vastly different than that of his recent modest dramas. The Stranger is grandiose and expressionistic, reserved in a chillingly detached manner that sets it apart from his broader recent comedy The Crime Is Mine or the warmly dramatic feature When Fall Is Coming. Instead, it looks closer to his 2016 black-and-white period piece Frantz.
In contrast to Visconti’s version, which is awash in the colors of its setting—red earth, deep blue ocean, green interiors and so on—Ozon’s The Stranger is shot in crisp, digital black-and-white, adding an expressionistic flair to his compositions. Cinematographer Manu Dacosse’s work enhances Meursault’s sense of isolation, illustrating a world the gray-tinged Meursault struggles to settle into. The filmmakers further draw attention to his lack of compassion with measured close-ups of the young man as he chooses to ignore the needs of those around him.
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