The 2026 French Film Festival recently wrapped up in Brisbane and one of the headline films this year was The Stranger.  It’s the latest from 58-year-old French director François Ozon who I’ve praised many times over the past three decades with my favourites including Swimming Pool (2003), Time to Leave (2005), Potiche (2010), In the House (2012), By the Grace of God (2019), and Summer of 85 (2020).  His works are noted for their beauty, humour and sexuality.

I’m less familiar with the late Albert Camus, an Algerian-born writer who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1957.  His first published novel was The Stranger, the tale of a good-looking, nonchalant Frenchman who, while living in Algiers, kills a local man and is put on trial for murder.  A friend of mine read the book recently and while he recommended it highly, I haven’t had a chance to engage with it myself.  It sounds like a quality mind trip!

That said, it can’t have been an easy film to adapt given what we see on screen.  Ozon has shot the film in black and white and, like the book, the focus is on a French guy named Meursault.  After his elderly mother passes away, he takes a few days off work to attend her funeral.  You won’t find too many other characters this year that display less emotion.  He’s like a walking “void” who wanders around Algiers with little purpose or care for others.  He seldom cares to explain himself which makes it tricky for us, as the audience, to understand why he is the way he is.

Meursault is suitably played by Benjamin Voisin who I remember best for his stellar lead turn in Lost Illusions.  I can see what the script is asking from him and have no major qualms with his performance, but I found his character to be more frustrating than intriguing.  Watching him sit in a courtroom offering no justification for his actions or his apathy… I didn’t feel satisfied.  Those familiar with Camus’ novel, who already have a deeper understanding of persona, can perhaps take more from it.

Chosen to screen in competition as part of last year’s Venice Film Festival, The Stranger is gorgeous to look at but at the same time, the slow-burn nature of the material makes it difficult to sit through.