The story takes place in Algiers during the 1940s, a time when Algeria was still a French colony. The film opens in vintage mode, with a French propaganda advert either made at the time or made to look like it was made at the time. The Europeans boast that they developed a primitive city into a civilised one with magnificent building “as tall as the ones in Paris”. However Arabs are not allowed into the cinema. Banners demanding liberation reveal that many locals are not satisfied. The topic of national allegiance prepares the ground for a the character study of a human being as complex and paradoxical as European colonialism.
Meursault (Benjamin Voisin) is a very handsome man in his 20s. He leads a perfectly functional life, with a respectable office job and a beautiful girlfriend called Marie (Rebecca Marder). But there’s something unusual about him. He is entirely indifferent to the life-defining events. His demeanour is withdrawn and taciturn, He has a permanently dispassionate expression printed on his face, and he is incapable of conveying emotion – good or bad. Even more interestingly, he’s unable to lie. Why should he make an effort to cover the truth? His ennui is such that can’t even bother to pretend anything. If life is a performance, Meursalt is not willing to become an actor. He embodies a strange combination of pragmatism and emptiness. Yet he’s surprisingly alluring, and Marie remains deeply infatuated.
Absolutely nothing moves Meursault, suggesting a pattern of psychopathic behaviour. He feels neither empathy nor hate. He doesn’t cry at his own mother’s funeral, and he refuses to see her corpse “because it’s pointless”. He accepts his girlfriend’s marriage proposal because he sees no point in turning it down. To Marie’s disappointment, he confesses that he would accept a marriage proposal from anyone. The offer of a promotion and an comfortable life in Paris do not excite him, either.
Despite his peculiar personality, Meursault befriends his neighbours Raymond Sintes (Pierre Lottin), who beats his “indigenous” (a euphemism for “Arab”) mistress Djemila, and Salamano, an old man who regularly abuses his pet dog. They seem to bond bond with Meursault because of his complacence (ie his tolerance of their objectionable behaviour).
One day, Meursault goes to the beach with Raymond and Marie. The males are confronted by Djemila’s brother and another man. After a brief altercation, Raymond gets harmed and the group disperses. For no apparent reason, Meursault returns to the place of the fight and kills Djemila’s brother with five bullet wounds. He is consequently arrested and tried. His lawyer is convinced that the French justice system will decide in his favour (because the victim is an Arab). The problem he faces is that Meursault’s unwavering commitment to indifference and to truth could make him a very inconvenient client and defendant. He is unprepared to feign regret, or even to identify a motive for cold-blooded assassination. the The final third of this 122-minute film is mostly a court room drama, with those who knew Meursault giving conflicting statements about his personality. The laconic man sits in the dock unconcerned about his fate (despite the knowledge that he could receive the death penalty, and have his head chopped off).
The French title of the film and the eponymous book means both “the stranger” and “the foreigner”, a subtlety that gets lost in translation. Meursault is an outsider in more ways than one: his identity is not Algerian, and his personality is a riddle. Despite being together with Marie for a year, he still behaves like a complete stranger towards her. He does not possess the ability to discriminate between different people: familiar or strange, good or bad, young or old, unscrupulous or dignified. Perhaps he can barely differentiate between a man and a woman. Super-queer director François Ozon leverages this possibility in order to inject some homoerotic possibilities into the film. Voisin’s young naked body is an object of voyeuristic appreciation. And at least two violent exchanges are sexualised. The bullet becomes a proxy for penetration.
But not all is doom and gloom. There’s hope of redemption. Not through religion though, as a devoted priest would hope. Mersault eventually finds joy and liberation. And it’s not in death, either. Mersault eventually finds joy and liberation in the awareness that death is neigh. A strangely comforting resolution.
Manuel Dacosse’s cinematography deserves unequivocal praise. Entirely filmed in black and white, and with stunning images of both the Algerian capital and the protagonists (numerous close-ups reveal a lot of attention to internal emotions), The Stranger paints the picture of a beautiful place, however as distant and bleak as our protagonist. Not even the sweltering summer sun is capable of lifting Meursalt. Instead it blinds him.
François Ozon’s 25th feature film (the insatiable 57-year-old French director has the habit of releasing a new movie every year) is an elegant, effective and mature drama. It just isn’t amongst Ozon’s finest pieces. The auteur is at his strongest with the more extravagant plots and sexually deviant characters, as in 8 Women (2002), Swimming Pool (2003), The Double Lover (2017) and Summer 85 (2020). The homoerotic elements seem strangely misplaced. The shock and the Camp elements are hardly discernible.
Fittingly, The Stranger wraps up with The Cure’s hit Killing an Arab. The song and its lyrics are in reference to Albert Camus’s book.
The Stranger premiered in the Official Competition of the 82nd Venice International Film Festival, when this piece was originally written. Also showing in San Sebastian, and at the BFI London Film Festival.
