One of the Frenchest directors currently working, the prolific Francois Ozon, makes one of his Frenchest films to date – a sleek, ennui-filled, black and white Camus adaptation that features smoking and nihilism by the bucketload. The Stranger (taking the more direct translation of the French title instead of the more common, and more prescriptive, English version of The Outsider) is a pretty and intriguing film, but, in lacking much of the source material’s inner monologue, even more unknowable than the book, an object of curiosity with limited emotional grip.
Faithfully set in 1930s colonial Algiers, here the icily beautiful Benjamin Voisin plays Meursault, a white Frenchman in Algeria who refuses to abide by social, conversational, or empathetic convention for even a moment. He feels very little, and gently but unenthusiastically acquiesces to pretty much anything any of his friends or acquaintances ask of him. To modern eyes, it looks like a placid semi-sociopathy, one that is to culminate in him killing an Arab local before facing a trial in which the actual murder is barely a consideration (a white man killing an ‘indigene’ is pretty much accepted conduct) next to the fact that Meursault didn’t cry at his mother’s funeral. It is his disregard for norms that makes him dangerous more than any killer instinct.
Ozon is, inevitably, more concerned with the colonial aspect than the original book (published in the early ‘40s) was, with the lost depth of Meursault’s internal monologue replaced in part by an expansion of the Arab voices in the film. They now have names, for example, while Ozon also gives Meursault’s girlfriend Marie (Rebecca Marder) more to say. All that said, this is still a story defined by Meursault and his worldview, which makes it consistently more of an intellectual exercise than an emotional or visceral one, for which I admit I have a more limited patience.
Voisin does good work in a tough role, calm and buttoned-up until Meursault finds the rare moment that moves him, whether that’s a beaming smile at Marie or white-hot rage when he is visited in prison by a priest, whose faith in a higher power is repulsive to Meursault’s idea of himself as perfectly rational. The black and white cinematography looks good too, and has a slippery thematic resonance when the actual killing comes. Meursault claims sun and heatstroke were the primary reasons he committed his murder, but the lack of colour in the frame robs the day of its heat, the grey sun not stinging the audience like a yellow one would.
The Stranger is certainly a film I admired more than enjoyed. To tackle this material, with its emotional remove and philosophical intent, on screen is no mean feat, and Ozon keeps it watchable throughout, but I can’t say the plight of anyone involved especially moved me, or will stick with me, which is probably exactly how Meursault himself would like it.
Jack Blackwell – Film Reviews 