M, 123 minutes

5 Stars 

Review by © Jane Freebury

It is a surprise to see that there are few film versions of the influential and controversial novel, l’Etranger, first published in 1942. Spare on detail and big on impact, the novella by Albert Camus would seem a promising candidate for adaptation, yet this is only the third time it has been made for the big screen.

Whether as required reading for students of French or in translation as the famous first work of a Nobel-prize winning author, it has had an impact with generations of readers. The tale of an alienated, non-conformist young man who refuses to behave in ways expected of him and is ultimately executed for the murder of an indigenous man, apparently without motive, is as enigmatic as ever.

It was a canny decision by the screenplay writer and director Francois Ozon to make his film look like it is straight out of the 1940s, in lustrous black-and-white. The opening location shots accompanied by a voiceover introducing audiences to the city of Algiers during the colonialist period under the French, lend a traditional look and feel. Some graffiti hints at political unrest and the imminent end of an era.

Past work by the urbane, gay director Ozon, in interpersonal dramas like Swimming Pool and In the House, has always impressed me with their interrogation of social taboos, and willingness to explore the knotty areas of social interaction. I have always wished however that his films looked more beautiful with mise-en-scene somewhat less functional. The Stranger is glorious to look at, within the city and along the coast or hinterland beyond.

Casting Benjamin Voisin as the lead character Meursault, an office clerk, was an inspired choice. The young actor, marvellous in Lost Illusions, inhabits his subversively indifferent character with ease, combining arrogance and swagger with a kind of befuddlement, an inability to comprehend the impact of his words and deeds on those around him.

Just a jerk? Someone whose friends included a man who beat his mistress and another who beat his dog

Meursault is odd, indeed. He’s strange. Resistant to the conventions of mourning when his mother dies, indifferent to the conventions of romance and marriage with his girlfriend, and stalled in his passivity in a life that seems to have no meaning for him.

Is he just a jerk? Is his callousness typically worse towards women? Probably. The neighbours that appear to be his male companions comprise Raymond (an excellent performance by Pierre Lottin) who beats his mistress, and another neighbour Salamano (Denis Lavant) who beats his dog.

When his boss offers him a transfer that would send him to Paris, Meursault knocks it back. One life is as good as another, he says, there’s no need to change anything. Then explains to his girlfriend Marie (Rebecca Marder) that he was dismissing the opportunity for advancement because all the buildings in Paris were black, the people ghastly white and there were pigeons everywhere. I mean, really?

While rejecting the ministrations of a priest in the moments before his execution, when Meursault blurts out his ideas about truth in a world of tender indifference, he still fails to elicit empathy. Is he a creature true to a philosophical position, rather than a person of flesh and blood?

Was his greatest crime non-conformism? The film likes to tease us with difficult questions

Taken to its logical extreme, do callousness and alienation inevitably drive a person to commit murder? Does the way a victim is objectified in a text in which most of the indigenous characters remain unnamed make for a problematic text? Absolutely. Ozon likes to tease us with difficult questions.  Indeed, a horrible crime gave society licence to dispose of a pesky, inconvenient nihilist too, whose greatest crime seems to have been non-conformism.

Was the novel an existentialist work? Camus, born in Algeria of French parents may have denied that it was, but his novella is still called an existential masterpiece.

While it is a couple of years since I read the book in French, this is a faithful adaptation and a brilliant film. As an audio-visual work, so very different from the printed page, it can be judged on its own merits, and success in doing what it set out to do.

Here, everything at every level, including the visuals and sounds, together with the writing and acting, is impressive. Moreover, the classic existential foundations of Camus’ writing, that provide the film with its foundation, retain their ambiguity and cryptic allure.

Published in the Canberra Times on 17 April 2026 and on Rotten Tomatoes