Camus’ “The Stranger”, according to Ozon, at the cinema: the man who did not want to live his life…

“Today mom died. Or maybe yesterday, I don’t know.” If adaptation is betrayal, doing it wisely is not a bad idea. Avoiding the most famous incipit of 20th century French literature is not a bad idea. Thus, the second cinematographic adaptation of Albert Camus’ masterpiece (after that of Luchino Visconti from 1957 – “off topic” as they say in high school where the book continues to be studied) begins with authentic news: more than eighty years have passed since its publication, a little contextualization is not useless on Algeria, a French department, its light, its shadows…

In the process, we discover Meursault (Benjamin Voisin, as it should be beyond impassive, absent to himself) just before the police take him away and throw him in prison. For what ? “I killed an Arab.” And the story then goes back to the morning when he received the telegram informing him of his mother’s death. A modest office worker in Algiers, in 1938, he took two days off to go to Marengo for the funeral. The bus journey is long, the heat oppressive and the asylum where he watches over his mother all night, isolated. He didn’t want to see his mother’s face one last time, he didn’t cry when she was buried; this will be blamed on him later during his trial for the murder without apparent motive of an Arab, and moreover even more than this homicidal gesture.

Clearly split into two parts, The stranger according to François Ozon initially sticks to documenting the ordinary of this man who is no less ordinary at the same time as not at all. We see him bonding without enthusiasm with Sintès, his proud neighbor who today would be described as toxic (Pierre Lottin in “Pepe le Moko” mode).

His extra emotion

We also follow him in his relationship with Marie Cardona (Rebecca Marder, wonderful). There, the mute Meursault appears less abstract, more sensual, but no less unfathomable and insensitive. “Do you love me?” she asks him. “It doesn’t mean anything.”he replies. This Marie, who embraces life, and would like to set the heart of the indifferent beau on fire, is one of the major contributions of Ozon’s adaptation: she is his added emotion.

Ozon claims his political supplement in his view of the Algerians; more particularly in the identification he offers of the revolved Arab, Moussa, and the new importance he gives to his sister Djemila.

Considerations (in the noblest sense) which also irrigate the second part of the film, less dry, although more theoretical, which is divided between the trial and the wait in prison. This is where Meursault expresses his vision of existence, which he finds ontologically absurd, and expresses his refusal to participate in this comedy without object or interest that is life. His refusal to confess is a great moment, as is the dream of Bergmanian aesthetics, one might as well say metaphysical, that he has and sees him climb towards the scaffold.

Ozon does not unravel the Meursault mystery, he illuminates it, in a sublime black and white which confirms its classic stature and underlines its timeless essence.