The Stranger (L’Étranger) Review

Albert Camus’ The Outsider, or The Stranger (or L’Étranger) has long been considered difficult, if not outright impossible, to adapt. Not because the plot is particularly complicated, but because so much of the novel unfolds within the mind of its outwardly emotionless protagonist. Camus’ existential, absurdist tone, combined with the fraught geo-political dynamics that existed between French settlers and Algerians, means that making an adaptation that is both faithful and an engaging, interesting film in its own right is a pretty thankless task.

So it is with Francois Ozon’s film. This is a lush, elegantly shot film that, in terms of the plot at least, remains largely faithful to the events of the novel. But it breezes over much of the book’s interiority and existentialism, creating an odd dissonance between what we’re supposed to feel and what we actually feel. Like Jack Clayton’s adaptation of The Great Gatsby, where Francis Ford Coppola effectively transcribed the dialogue directly from the book, it’s an overly literary adaptation that sometimes feels a little anaemic. It essentially feels like a beautifully filmed book.

Mersault (Benjamin Voisin) is an everyman, a generic office worker. He is polite and charming, superficially well-adjusted. He maintains friendly relationships with those he meets, but beneath the surface lies an emotional detachment that defines the narrative. He’s not a bad man, but he is somewhat apathetic and honest to a fault. When he kills an Algerian man in ambiguous circumstances, the film shifts into courtroom drama, where the focus becomes less the crime itself than Meursault’s perceived failure to demonstrate basic human emotions, or any kind of empathy.

What Ozon gets right is the oppressive, often hypnotic atmosphere of the book. The arid, claustrophobic heat that hangs over the film becomes as much an antagonist as the legal system closing in on Meursault. There is also a clear understanding of the story’s absurdity; the sense that Meursault could escape punishment if only he would conform, offer an excuse, perform grief. Instead, the trial becomes a moral indictment of his character – his indifference to his mother’s death, his casual disregard for cultural norms and traditions of the time.

The problem is that in this version, this doesn’t really come across. There’s no narration (at least, not until well into the film), and Voisin doesn’t quite hit the mark as Meursault. It’s not that he’s a bad actor; he acquits himself pretty well, but he is just wrong for the part. Meursault is supposed to be a bit of a cypher; an unremarkable presence onto whom meaning is projected. Here, Voisin’s beauty and the lack of any introspection make him come across as aloof, self-possessed, even faintly arrogant – he’s more of a Josef K figure, seeming indignant about being prosecuted at all, which is just wrong for the character. Ozon’s camera is fascinated with Voisin, often holding him in lingering shots, often in his swimming costume, that focus on his physicality. Without the guiding context of his inner monologue, his detachment reads less as existential neutrality and more as emotional disengagement.

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The final stretch is where the film finds its thematic footing, but also where it becomes most uneven and didactic. The murder trial is so heightened – bordering at times on the surreal – that it sits uneasily alongside the understated first half. The film up to this point is shot beautifully, but is still relatively natural (aside from Mersault himself, but that’s kind of the point). Once the trial starts, everything feels so over the top that it’s difficult to work out to what extent you are expected to take it literally. Ozon chooses this moment to introduce Meursault’s narration, which is a frankly bizarre choice, only emphasising just how much has been missing up to this point. Without access to his inner voice, all the audience has to judge him on are his external actions, as opposed to the internal contradictions that define his character in the novel.

The supporting cast fares better. Denis Lavant is both absurd and affecting as an irascible neighbour, whose relationship with his dog provides much-needed levity and poignancy to the film, and Pierre Lottin brings the requisite arrogance and roguish charm to Meursault’s volatile neighbour. Swann Arlud’s late appearance as a priest is both a welcome and a slightly prosaic way to close the film – it’s reminiscent of the confessions scene in Paths Of Glory. He’s great in the role, but it comes a little late in the day to make much impact. Rebecca Marder’s Marie, meanwhile, highlights one of the story’s more dated elements – her infatuation and devotion to Meursault is difficult to fully invest in from a modern perspective, despite attempts to deepen the role.

To the film’s credit, Ozon engages, at least implicitly, with more recent responses to Camus, particularly Kamel Daoud’s novel, written in response to Camus’s The Meursault Investigation, which grants more autonomy and depth to the Algerians in the story. Ozon reframes the ending to focus on the grave of the Algerian man murdered by Mersault, offering a concession that, you know, he did deserve to be arrested for the crime, as well as expanding the female roles of the novel. These are inclusions that make the story more palatable to a modern audience, but this creates a tension: the story remains rooted in the worldview of the 1940s, and these adjustments, while understandable, sometimes muddle rather than deepen the central ambiguity, and make Meursault less sympathetic as a result.

Saying this is a decent adaptation seems damning with faint praise, but L’Étranger remains a qualified success – some elements work really well. Structurally and technically speaking, it’s brilliant, if a little long, and the performances are all strong. The back half is where the pacing suffers, through languorous pacing and a repetitive final run of scenes leading to the inevitable ending. There’s something faintly tragic about the result. It’s simultaneously too reverent to fully reinterpret the novel, and too detached to capture its essence. It isn’t likely to satisfy fans of the book, and will be a bit inaccessible, and honestly, a bit of a slog for those who aren’t familiar with the source material.

What’s missing is that essential thread: the unsettling ambivalence of Meursault’s worldview, and Camus’ notion of “the benign indifference of the world“. Without that, the film becomes an elegant surface-level adaptation, but without much philosophical weight beneath it. It’s an intelligent, often striking adaptation, but one that ultimately struggles to reconcile the novel’s interiority with film’s outward gaze.

★★★

In UK cinemas on April 10th / Benjamin Voissin, Rebecca Marder, Denis Lavant, Pierre Lottin, Swann Arlud / Dir: François Ozon / Curzon / 12A