Francois Ozon’s The Stranger, based on the novella by Albert Camus, has been released in Russian cinemas. Film critic Oleg Tundra writes that the director chose a form максимально faithful to the source: no postmodern twists, no shift to the present day, and no radically new interpretation.
The film follows Meursault, a young Frenchman living in colonial Algeria in the early 1940s. After burying his mother, he continues his life in habitual detachment, begins a relationship with Marie, spends time with a dubious neighbor, and then accidentally kills an Arab man on a beach. In court, the focus is not only the killing itself but also his emotional coldness: that he did not cry at the funeral, went to the movies, and swam in the sea the next day.
According to the review, the main difficulty of adapting the book lies in the fact that Camus created a protagonist with almost no conventional inner monologue. Ozon therefore does not try to explain Meursault’s behavior and strips away psychological interpretation almost entirely. The viewer encounters the character through gestures, glances, a cigarette in his hand, sweat, harsh light, and bodily presence.
“Adapting a book always involves betrayal. Literature and cinema are different languages, and you have to find a way to translate the text without destroying it,” Ozon said.
One of the film’s central choices is its black-and-white palette. Algeria appears not as an exotic landscape but as a sun-scorched emptiness where white flashes seem to erase the world’s outlines. Tundra argues that this austere style makes the film unexpectedly conservative for a director often associated with provocation and stylistic freedom.
At the same time, the article says Camus’ novel still feels current: it echoes debates about borders, identity, and society’s urge to judge not only actions but acceptable emotions. In this version, The Stranger becomes a story about a man who refuses to take part in a collective ritual of feeling, and that is what makes him especially alien to everyone around him.