Francois Ozon’s new adaptation of The Stranger performs a minor miracle: it breathes new life and relevancy into Albert Camus’s existential classic. Yes, Maman is still morte. Yes, Meursault is still detached and indifferent, and yes, he still kills an Arab. But the inky, velvety black and white cinematography hypnotizes the viewer, the note-perfect period details give the film a vivid immediacy, and the performances, led by Benjamin Voison as Meursault, make the characters come alive as flesh and blood, lending the oft-discussed and debated tale an air of humanity and tragedy that unlocks this familiar text, granting it the power to once again shock and surprise. “Above all, Ozon reintroduces Algerians and their country as a dominant presence. Ozon’s reading of L’Étranger makes it clear that the invisibility of Algeria in Camus’s novel, which Meursault narrates, stands for the willful blindness that embodies the colonial mindset… In its spare, though highly detailed period realism and Manu Dacosse’s glistening black-and-white camerawork, The Stranger is altogether Bressonian.” – BFI Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Cinematographer, 2025 Lumière Awards (BR)
This film is part of the Wisconsin Film Festival
