Between the cerebral nature of his ideas and the strict control practiced by the estate that safeguards his legacy, few of the celebrated French philosopher and novelist Albert Camus’ works have been adapted for the silver screen in the sixty-plus years since his death. After all, Camus’ concept of Absurdism, the inherent discord created by humanity’s search for meaning in a chaotic, unexplainable universe, does not exactly make for Hollywood-friendly adaptations.

With his latest directorial effort, French provocateur François Ozon throws his hat into the ring of the few who have toiled to translate Camus’ words into cinema, taking on the late intellectual’s arguably most famous work, The Stranger, first published in 1942. Elegantly shot in crisp monochrome and starring Benjamin Voisin as the epochal antihero at the center of the novel, Ozon’s effort serves as a sensual adaptation that may surprise some of the director’s longtime fans with its willingness to play by the rules laid down by its source material.

Voisin (César-nominated for the role) leads as the endlessly enigmatic Meursault, a French settler living in Algiers during the hundred-plus years Algeria was under French control, so mysterious that we never even learn his first name. Waking one morning to receive an unexpected telegram, Meursault learns that his mother has passed away. Just as handsome as he is vacant, Meursault attends his mother’s funeral vigil, unconcerned with seeing the body of his deceased matriarch before she is interred beneath the arid landscape for eternity.

Leaving his mother’s memory behind and quickly resuming his normal life, one more concerned with its physical rather than spiritual delights, Meursault passes his free time with the white neighbors who occupy his apartment building, decrepit dog-beater Salamano (Denis Lavant) and seedy woman-abuser Sintès (Pierre Lottin), both characters who reflect Meursault as figures also contending with loss in their own ways. The only ray of positivity in Meursault’s seemingly empty world is Marie (Rebecca Marder), who wishes to be his wife but is likely only his plaything for earthly pleasures, particularly those of the bedroom variety.

When Sintès invites the impossibly attractive couple to a day at the beach, everything turns from sublime to hellish with the flash of a knife blade and the shot (or five shots) of a handgun: the scorned brother of Sintès’ Algerian lover has followed them to the seaside with a taste for revenge. Under the intoxicating influence of the Mediterranean sun, Meursault shoots and kills the Arab brother, with no rational explanation behind the act of violence that alters the course of his life. Tried before a colonial court that would typically pardon a white man for such a murder, Meursault’s intrinsic apathy turns out to be his biggest adversary, for which he must face sobering consequences.

Working with frequent collaborator Manu Dacosse to construct the movie’s visual language, The Stranger’s cinematography does much heavy lifting to recreate the tangible atmosphere of Camus’ novel. Early scenes are awash in the blinding rays of the summer sun, with the camera seductively accentuating every droplet of sweat or ocean water clinging to the clavicles of Meursault and his newfound lover, sketching them as the beautiful figures who epitomize the eternal chicness of French cinema and call back to the sensuous style that first put Ozon’s cinema du corps on the map. Echoing the novel’s bifurcation, the latter half leaves behind this sun-soaked freedom and enters the darkness of the shadowy interiors that eventually imprison Meursault, replicating the stark black-and-white contrasts of the director’s visual references, including vintage Algerian newsreels. Unable to emulate the book’s strict first-person perspective, the lens pursues Meursault with a specific composure and stillness that mirrors his own.

The Stranger marks Voisin’s second time working with Ozon after 2020’s Summer of 85. Their latest partnership required Voisin to personify an intricate character known to millions worldwide who have read Camus’ influential novel over the years, no small feat, to say the least, as Meursault’s character epitomized many of the disillusioned male figures distinguished throughout 20th-century literature. While Meursault may not possess an easily relatable moral compass, his relationship with the physical world and the sensations it can produce is intriguingly grounded. The swoon-worthy Voisin manifests these contradictions through his every controlled movement, at once psychologically withdrawn from his reality and a standout figure within a society that eventually rejects him and his ideology, a stranger to the world. In interviews, the actor has described Meursault as his “most physical role” to date.

Only the second filmmaker to adapt The Stranger after Luchino Visconti’s 1967 effort, Ozon remains quite faithful to every narrative beat and characterization of Camus’ book, with the director also penning the screenplay in typical auteur fashion. While Ozon’s previous adaptations, including Frantz and Peter von Kant, have been more loose in the transformations of their source material, The Stranger remains significantly straightforward, likely due to the restrictions around Camus’ estate previously mentioned, as well as the respected cultural reverence for the novel, both in France and abroad. Several iconic lines of dialogue are lifted directly from the book, including its tremendous final sentence: “I had only to wish that there be a large crowd of spectators the day of my execution and that they greet me with cries of hate”.

Where Ozon’s rendition of The Stranger departs significantly from Camus’ work is in its depiction of Algiers under French rule. The movie’s opening scene uses archival news footage from the 1930s, depicting the seaside city as crumbling and backward before its French occupation in 1830. Distinguished by broad boulevards and Haussmann-style architecture, the newsreel shows how the city was forced to mold into those of France during the colonial period. While the novel rarely contends with such historical truths, Ozon’s version constructs the white-dominated world in which Meursault moves, from his apartment building to his office to the companions he keeps and the places they frequent; you could easily mistake these places and people for those of Paris. When Meursault takes Marie on a date to the movies, the camera holds attention on a “whites only” sign outside of the theater, signaling the institutionalized racial hierarchy imposed by the occupation. Ozon’s screenplay even pays tribute to Meursault’s indigenous victim by giving him a name, Moussa Hamdani, a dignity bypassed by the novel.

Although Ozon’s The Stranger may feel more buttoned-up than some of his earlier works of provocation, the film still drips with an ominous carnality that makes its beautifully composed scenes and even more enchanting central character sear in your brain, much like its source material. While Ozon’s prolific career has him churning out a film nearly every year at this point, The Stranger certainly stands out as a recent highlight. As global affairs seemingly descend into further disorder by the day, reincarnating one of Camus’ most captivating works, one that helped him concretize his theories of Absurdism, has never felt more pertinent.

4/5

120 minutes | Crime, Drama | France | French with English subtitles | 2025

‘The Stranger’ world premiered In Competition at the 2025 Venice Film Festival. The film begins its U.S. theatrical release on Friday, April 3, courtesy of Music Box Films. Click here to find showtimes for ‘The Stranger’ near you.

‘The Stranger’ Review: François Ozon Plays by the Rules to Bring the French Absurdist Classic to the Silver Screen

4/5

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