François Ozon, “L’Étranger” (2025)
The third film adaptation of Albert Camus’s famous novel, and the first made in France – previous adaptations having been made in Italy and Turkey – is at once surprising and yet unsurprising: surprising in that it was made by François Ozon, not normally noted for adapting films from novels, and unsurprising in that it is a very faithful and minimalist adaptation of the novel. Perhaps the film is a bit too faithful: it ends up a very laboured work, especially in its second half, and modern Western audiences may find its pace very slow for what is a straightforward, simply told story. At the same time the film adds details that, though minor, give some emotional depth to the plot and fleshes out its historical context in a way that not only refreshes the plot and makes it relevant to audiences living in a post-colonial age, it also mirrors the central character’s lack of ease living in, and his alienation from, a society that lacks authenticity because it is located in another land whose native people and their culture and values are denied by that society.
Set in French-ruled Algeria in the 1930s, the film revolves around Meursault (Benjamin Voisin), an unassuming and unambitious pen-pusher in a shipping firm, who learns of his aged mother’s death in a nursing home outside Algiers. He attends her vigil and funeral without showing much emotion. After burying Maman, Meursault strikes up a relationship with Marie (Rebecca Marder) not long afterwards, and their relationship becomes more intimate as the days go by. At the same time, Meursault helps Raymond Sintès (Pierre Lottin) to get revenge on Raymond’s Arab girlfriend Djemila whom Raymond suspects of being unfaithful. Meursault expresses no opinion or concern for Djemila or the consequences of Raymond’s actions for all of them, Meursault included. Later, when the police visit Raymond after he hits Djemila, Meursault agrees to vouch for Raymond at the police station, and the police drop charges against him. Djemila’s brothers are offended that Raymond is unpunished and start to stalk both Raymond and Meursault. This sets in train a series of actions that culminate in Meursault shooting one of Djemila’s brothers dead with Raymond’s revolver at a remote beach.
From then on, Meursault is trapped in the French justice system where he confounds everyone – including the judge, the prosecutor and his defending lawyer – by agreeing that he did indeed commit murder so the prosecutor focuses on his indifference to his mother’s funeral and his passive nature to paint Meursault as a soulless psychopath who should be executed for his crime. Although various witnesses including Raymond and Marie speak for Meursault and his lawyer assures him that his sentence will be light, the judge and jury decide otherwise, and Meursault is sentenced to death by guillotine.
Meursault’s apathy and passive behaviour may be interpreted as rebelling against a society whose values and conventions leave him cold or otherwise disgusted. At the same time as he is alienated from this society, this society also alienates him from the physical environment in which he has grown up, and from the aboriginal people now treated as outsiders themselves in that environment. The advantage of a straight, minimalist presentation of a work such as “L’Étranger” is that it lends itself to many interpretations, all of which help readers, even readers who believe they’ve seen every possible interpretation of this novel, see it in ways they had not thought of before. In this way, Ozon’s film enriches our understanding of the novel and the colonial world it is set in. I must admit that it is one thing to know that pre-1962 Algeria was as much an apartheid society as any to be found in the African and Asian colonies of the British Empire, and another to actually see it depicted in the film. At the same time, it is clear that many pieds-noirs (French and other European settlers in Algeria) were working class or lower middle-class people who lived modestly and who, like Meursault, had lived all their lives in Algeria.
The pivotal moment in the film, as in the novel, comes in Meursault’s conversation with the prison chaplain, in which he defeats the chaplain’s patronising attitude and limited understanding of what he faces. After the chaplain leaves him, Meursault opens himself up to the universe’s indifference towards him and his fate, and realises that all through his life, in spite of living apart from others and being subjected to the prejudices of the French legal system and the hostility of the public, he has been happy and content. In being indifferent to others, even to others’ pain, and in being a reactive character who takes no assertive part in his fate, he is connected to a remote universe with no purpose for its living creations.
All the actors acquit themselves in their rather limited roles. Ozon goes further than the novel in giving Djemila and her murdered brother names, and (spoiler alert) adding a final scene in which Djemila mourns her brother’s passing – a scene that perhaps insinuates that Meursault won’t be blessed with such remembrance. The non-urban physical environment of Algeria – its beaches, its ocean waves, even the hot sun and the heat – plays a prominent role as the setting where Meursault commits murder and as a duplicitous cause itself of Meursault’s downfall. It may be ironic that being estranged from the society in which he has grown up, because of its hypocrisies and denial of its origins, leads Meursault to be ill at ease in the very environment where he should be able to discover his authentic self and an authentic way of being, and making connections with the people who have always lived in that environment. (At this point in the film, Ozon makes a suggestion of a possible homoerotic attraction between Meursault and the man he kills.)
A fair amount could have been expunged from the film – Meursault’s relationship with Marie tends to be repetitive and rather monotonous, and his trial drags on for a long time – and possibly much of what is seen in the film could have been dealt with by voice-over to speed it up. Viewers may find Meursault’s passive, robotic character a real puzzle and hard to sympathise with, so Ozon compensates by making Djemila the emotional heart of the film – and in doing so, giving the native people of colonial Algeria a voice, even if limited.
It may not be the definitive version of Camus’s novel, and I’m sure future directors will attempt their own interpretation of “L’Étranger”, but for the time being Ozon’s offering will be considered a very good, perhaps even great film on living as an outsider in an absurdist world. As the current world we live in becomes more detached from reality and authenticity, the novel and the films based on it come to have more relevance to our lives than it might have done when Camus first wrote it.