French Film Review: The Stranger – France Today | EUROtoday

François Ozon’s austere, absorbing movie follows Albert Camus’s existential anti-hero amid the heat-soaked, unequal world of colonial Algiers. Set in Algiers in 1938, Meursault is a indifferent workplace employee whose emotional indifference turns into each his defining trait and, finally, his undoing. He attends his mom’s funeral with out seen grievance, resumes his routines, begins an off-the-cuff relationship with Marie, and drifts into the orbit of his violent neighbor Raymond. When a killing happens on a sun-blasted seashore, the act itself issues lower than Meursault’s refusal to carry out the anticipated feelings that society calls for.

Camus’s 1942 novel is without doubt one of the most generally learn works within the French language, well-known for its cool prose and its exploration of the absurd: a world with out inherent which means, during which honesty is usually punished extra harshly than crime.

In this trendy adaptation, Ozon embraces that severity. Shot in black and white, the movie favors stillness, silence and bodily sensation – warmth, gentle, sweat – over psychological clarification. The first half unfolds nearly wordlessly, permitting the surroundings and Meursault’s passivity to talk for themselves, whereas the trial that follows exposes a society extra outraged by its failure to cry than by the homicide itself.

Benjamin Voisin’s Meursault is withdrawn but oddly luminous, his blankness by no means tipping into caricature. Rebecca Marder’s Marie is given better depth than within the e book, rising as a heat determine who understands Meursault. Ozon additionally sharpens the colonial context, underlining the invisibility of the Arab sufferer. Faithful in spirit somewhat than element, this clever movie respects Camus’s imaginative and prescient whereas insisting on its continued relevance.

Director: François Ozon

Starring: Benjamin Voisin, Rebecca Marder, Pierre Lottin, Denis Lavant

From France Today Magazine

Lead picture credit score: foreigner CR Carole BethuelFozGaumontFrance 2 Cinema