The Stranger

An adaptation of Camus’s novel, one of the key works of existentialism. Meursault is a clerk in colonial Algeria — neither good nor evil, simply indifferent, which is perhaps even more unsettling. His mother dies — he attends the funeral, but does not cry. He returns, goes to the beach, meets Marie, starts a relationship. Then he kills a stranger on the beach. Because of the sun, as he says. It just happened.

The first half of the film unfolds as a slow, hypnotic portrait of everyday life — a man alien to his own existence. The second becomes a courtroom drama, where society tries to impose meaning where none exists by definition.

Ozon sometimes trusts the source material too much and himself not quite enough. And yet, this is a rare case where adapting the “unadaptable” does not feel like a misstep. (Kanobu)