The Stranger (L'étranger)

 

Director François Ozon

Writer/philosopher Albert Camus

THE STRANGER (L'étranger)                                  B                                                       France  (122 mi)  2025  d: François Ozon                        

Whatever I choose, it amounts to the same... absolutely nothing.                                               —Killing an Arab, by The Cure, 1978, The Cure - Killing An Arab (Live in Barcelona 1985) YouTube (2:40)

A film so overly detached that it’s hard for viewers to find an entry point, even if the 1942 Albert Camus novel is already known to us, where this is a faithful rendition, with a slight revisionist update, of what remains one of the three most widely read French books worldwide, alongside Saint-Exupéry’s Little Prince and Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables, Best French Literature (873 books), with Paris newspaper Le Monde listing it #1 of their best 100 Books of the 20th Century.  One of the cornerstones of existential philosophy, it is inherently alienating, unfathomable and provocative, yet it continues to challenge us with the ethical and metaphysical questions it provokes, with Camus (born in Algeria) winning the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1957, remaining a political voice during the Cold War, rejecting both communism and capitalism.  Only at the end, in a prison sequence, bearing some minimalist resemblance to Bresson’s Pickpocket (1959), does this elevate substantially in a positively brilliant scene between the protagonist and a priest, which recalls an even more intense prison sequence in Steve McQueen’s HUNGER (2008) between Irish nationalist Bobby Sands and a Catholic priest, which is a 20-minute uninterrupted sequence arguing over moral principles.  A frequently controversial figure of French cinema since the 1990’s, François Ozon has continued to surprise and delight with his ever-stylish, daring, and genre-defying films, from erotic thrillers to queer coming-of-age dramas, his films include UNDER THE SAND (2000), 8 WOMEN (2002), SWIMMING POOL (2003), TIME TO LEAVE (2005), ANGEL (2007), Potiche (2010), In the House (Dans La Maison) (2012), Young & Beautiful (Jeune & Jolie) (2013), The New Girlfriend (Une nouvelle amie) (2014), Frantz (2016), By the Grace of God (Grâce à Dieu) (2019), Peter von Kant (2022), The Crime Is Mine (Mon Crime) (2023), and When Fall Is Coming (Quand vient l'automne) (2024), among others.  Ozon has proven to be one of modern French cinema’s most prolific auteurs, making 25 films in nearly 30 years, so who better to tackle the novel by Camus, one of the fundamental pillars in the legacy of French literary existentialism.  Drawn to dark, mordantly psychological films that are intimate and personal, Ozon makes films that are comically odd and puzzling, yet also liberating, filled with a poignant awareness of loss and unfulfilled desire.  More often than not he writes his own screenplays, where an absurd existentialism beats at the heart of his films, but this is something else altogether since it comes from such a recognizable literary work, the first adaptation made in French, where the protagonist is condemned by society as callous, cold, and dangerous because he does not act according to their norms, becoming the titular stranger for whom there is no place in the world.  Synthesizing the meaning of his novel, Camus wrote: “In our society, any man who doesn’t cry at his mother’s funeral is liable to be condemned to death.”  Luchino Visconti filmed an earlier adaptation of the novel with a slightly older Marcello Mastroianni (the director wanted Alain Delon) and Anna Karina, which went missing for years, apparently due to rights issues, and still remains under the radar, only available through specialized imports or film retrospectives, though it is notable for its overdetermined literariness, using a stream-of-conscious voiceover and dialogue taken directly from the pages of the novel.  Turkish director Zeki Demirkubuz also filmed his own adaptation in 2001 entitled FATE (Yazgi), while Ingmar Bergman apparently wanted to do an adaptation as well, but no projects ever developed.  A copy of the book also turns up in Jacques Audiard’s 2010 Top Ten Films of the Year: #10 A Prophet ... (2009), a prison drama that reflects the grim alienation and existential choices present in the Camus work, while the British rock band Joy Division, particularly lead singer Ian Curtis, was profoundly influenced by existentialist literature, with Albert Camus serving as a key intellectual touchstone, with their music drenched in a similar philosophical, moody, and existentialist atmosphere.

Winner of Best Film, Best Actor, and Best Cinematography at the recently held Lumière Awards in Paris just a month ago honoring the best French-speaking movies, the ceremony took place appropriately enough at the Institut du Monde Arabe (Arab World Institute).  Co-written by Ozon and Philippe Piazzo, who have collaborated on his last six films, with a spare musical score by Senegal-born Kuwaiti musician Fatima Al Qadiri, who provided the music for Mati Diop’s film Atlantics (Atlantique) (2019), this is essentially a Dostoyevskian Crime and Punishment movie, set in French-colonial Algeria in 1938 (actually shot in Morocco), told in two parts, before and after the killing of an (unnamed in the book) Arab man in the stifling heat of Algiers, which comes just weeks after the funeral of the protagonist’s mother.  Meursault, Benjamin Voisin from Summer of '85 (Été 85) (2020), is a quiet, unassuming shipping clerk in his early thirties, indifferent to everything, withdrawn, barely speaking, showing little interest in anything, yet he’s an enigma who’s a tough nut to crack, opaque, indifferent, and without a moral conscience, working so well in literature, with a fresh originality, as we’re literally immersed inside his head in a first-person narrative, privy to every minute psychological detail and thought, yet in the world of cinema, he’s a dour onscreen presence, apparently unable to process emotions, remaining disconnected from viewers, who will find it difficult to relate.  The book starts with his discovery of the death of his mother, “Mother died today.  Or maybe yesterday; I can’t be sure,” while in the film it’s the unforeseen arrival of a telegram that sets the wheels in motion, “Mother deceased.  Burial tomorrow.”  Attractively shot in black and white by Belgian cinematographer Manuel Dacosse in his fifth collaboration with Ozon, it feels both stark and elegantly restrained, made with austere precision, using very few camera movements, consisting mainly of static shots, with a brief opening prison sequence acknowledging “I killed an Arab” that alludes to what follows.  The tone is set by oppressive heat, yet Meursault wears a formal jacket and tie as he takes a bus to attend his mother’s funeral out in the countryside, where he’s immediately viewed as an outsider, not known to any of the medical staff who were caring for his mother at a nearby nursing home, showing no real signs of grief or mourning.  When asked if he wishes to see her body, he declines, claiming “There’s no point,” but instead smokes and drinks coffee at the vigil held by the coffin the night before the burial, but people look at him abnormally, with his impassive gaze, yet what stands out is that he never sheds a single tear.  When it comes time to bury the body, he goes outside in the scorching sun, where the only thing that seems to affect him is the heat, which seems to be a malevolent presence, as other than that, nothing seems to matter, emphasizing again and again “Nothing is important.”  As if to clear his mind afterwards, he runs into a colleague at the local baths, Marie (Rebecca Marder), a former typist where he works, and the two go swimming together as he quickly slips back into his former routine, resulting in a casual affair, displaying a carefree interest, The Stranger new clip official from Venice Film Festival 2025 YouTube (2:03), where cooling down seems to help him relax, as later that evening they see a Marcel Pagnol comedy LE SCHPOUNTZ (1938) starring beloved French comedian Fernandel, whose wild, over-the-top antics, which generate no reaction whatsoever from Meursault, are a bit of a surprise in this otherwise downbeat film.  Of curious interest is a sign at the box office that states, in French, “Établissement interdit aux indegenes (Establishment forbidden to natives).”

Meursault lives in a drab, non-descript hotel, where one of his eccentric old neighbors down the hall is Salamano (Denis Lavant), who continually beats and torments his mangy dog before it runs away, while the sadistic Raymond Sintès (Pierre Lottin) is a big, burly man who claims he works at a warehouse, but is generally acknowledged to be a pimp, who draws Meursault into his shady dealings, yet he’s unfazed by the racist misogyny, even after Raymond beats the living hell out of his Arab mistress, Djemila (Hajar Bouzaouit), yet the police release him with just a warning, as Meursault speaks up for him, identifying him as a friend.  This speaks to the double standard that exists for whites in a dehumanizing colonial occupation that views Arabs in their own country as second class citizens without the same rights, and it angers the family of the beaten girl, whose brothers suddenly become a looming presence in their lives, like a constant threat they can’t ignore, with Raymond mentioning that they’ve been following him around recently.  Accordingly, the white characters all have names in the Camus novel, while the Arab characters do not, as they are viewed as subhuman and invisible by the French colonizers, with the two cultures living side-by-side without actually seeing the other, where even in contemporary times that pain remains raw between France and Algeria, as a heavy silence still weighs upon their shared histories.  Ozon expands the role of Djemila, giving her a more prominent voice to the often-silenced victim in the original story, and in doing so accentuates the routine colonial injustices.  The expanded role of both Marie and Djemila are a stark female counterpoint to the more toxic male characters.  One weekend, Raymond invites Meursault and Marie to the beach, where they encounter the Arab brother of Djemila, who deliberately remains nameless in the novel, as if to emphasize Meursault’s detachment, but in a change from the original text Ozon gives him the name of Moussa (Abderrahmane Dehkani), empowering the character by giving him an identity.  His presence prompts Raymond to hand a revolver to Meursault for emergency purposes, leading to Moussa’s revenge-driven confrontation with Meursault, who finds himself disoriented and on the edge of heatstroke on the beach, which leads to the pivotal, yet shocking, shooting, firing a fatal shot, but after a pause, fires four more shots.  Ozon films the scene in a sensory manner, almost completely silent, with the sun’s reflection off the blade of a knife blinding his eyes, where the violent act contrasts significantly from the serenity of the beach location.  Meursault is incarcerated afterwards, where the confinement in prison mirrors his overall sense of detachment, exploring themes of meaninglessness and human indifference, as Meursault’s apathy serves as a critique of French society.  Never denying the murder he committed, blaming it on the sun and the intensity of the heat, which becomes a physical force, blurring discomfort and fate, though what stands out at the trial is that he’s condemned less for the crime he commits than on his lack of emotion, as he is absurdly portrayed as heartless due to his inability to cry at his mother’s funeral, where his passivity is viewed as a lack of remorse, denouncing him as a soulless monster that deserves to be put to death.  Even after refusing to see the prison chaplain (Swann Arlaud), he receives a visit anyway, with the chaplain believing Meursault will be released on appeal, but it will not relieve the pervading sense of guilt he feels, which he attributes to his faithlessness, in his belief that God doesn’t exist.  Insulted by what he perceives as a patronizing attitude, Meursault refuses to play along and accosts the chaplain in a fit of rage, confident in his belief that we are resigned to our own fate, “Actually, I was sure of myself, sure about everything, far surer than he; sure of my present life and of the death that was coming,” where nothing can change the fact that we are all condemned to die one day, so in the end, nothing ultimately matters.  “I had only a little time left and I didn’t want to waste it on God.”  Ozon resorts to a voiceover only twice, once at the end of the first part, and again at the very end, as in those key moments the detached voice of Meursault preserves the literary style of Camus, while in the end the Cure’s 1979 post-punk anthem The Cure - Killing An Arab (Live in Barcelona 1985) YouTube (2:40) blares angrily, where the apathy of the main character is the focus of the song, which was singer/songwriter Robert Smith’s Camus-inspired, poetic impressions of the shooting at the beach.

Note

In a contemporary analysis of the character of Meursault, it has been suggested that he’s autistic, though Asperger’s Syndrome wasn’t diagnosed until 1944, two years after the novel was published, and didn’t officially become recognized as a formal mental health diagnosis until 1994, so with such limited knowledge of autism at the time, it was probably not what Camus had in mind.  However, Camus reportedly based the character of Meursault on his close friend Pierre Galindo, who was revealed to be an intelligent but odd person, who exhibited the characteristic impairment of social and personal behavior of Asperger’s Syndrome, yet Camus recognized and understood his friend’s strange behavior before Asperger’s Syndrome had been defined.  Nonetheless, in view of the many interpretations of the novel and film, it is worth mentioning, and has been written about extensively, including this 21-page essay by Isabelle Wentworth from Journal of Camus Studies in 2015, (DOC) Autism & Absurdism: Philosophical Ramifications of ..., suggesting the creation of Meursault may be the first published account of a man with this disorder.  While certainly not a definitive reading, the interpretations and ideas developed from Meursault’s words, thoughts, and actions may now be seen by some as the words and behavior of a man with Asperger’s Syndrome.  It should also be mentioned that Algerian journalist Kamel Daoud (now living in France under police protection after the authoritarian Algerian regime sought his arrest) wrote his first novel, The Meursault Investigation, as a 2013 counterpoint to the Camus story from the perspective of the unnamed Arab victim killed by the Camus protagonist.

CAMUS, Albert - The Stranger.pdf  77-page novella (pdf)

Recollections of the Yellow House (Recordações da Casa Amarela)

 

Erich von Stroheim from Blind Husbands (1919)

Count Orlak from Nosferatu (1922)

Director João César Monteiro

 

 

RECOLLECTIONS OF THE YELLOW HOUSE (Recordações da Casa Amarela)       B            Portugal  (122 mi)  1989  d: João César Monteiro

Back home they called the prison “the yellow house.”  Sometimes when we kids played in the streets, we used to take a look at the dark and silent bars on the high windows.  Full of awe we’d say: “Poor buggers!...”  Here we are on our own once again.  This is all so slow, so heavy, so sad…I shall be old soon.  Then it will all be over.  So many people have come into this bedroom.  They said things that didn’t mean much to me.  They left.  They grew old.  Became slow and miserable, each one in his own corner of the world.                                       —opening intertitle

Portugal’s João César Monteiro is one of the more controversial filmmakers, directing only 12 features in his lifetime, writing and starring in all of them.  With an affiliation for poetry, painting, theater, literature, and music, his films are known for their literary components, given a painterly look, typically concerned with matters of the spirit as much as those of the body, where his films are seen as an extension of all the other artforms.  In the early 1970’s, the Carnation Revolution ended more than four decades of fascism in Portugal, spawning a new generation of filmmakers with a distinctively literary mindset, all in the shadow of its modern national poet, Fernando Pessoa, creating a fusion of artistic, cinematic, and literary inspirations.  Part of Portuguese New Cinema, there’s a poetic melancholy, even sadness, in its overall tone in how it portrays a certain lingering “malaise,” which is captured in the shootings of the narrow Lisbon streets.  This sixth feature and breakthrough work had a brief run in America, but like all of his films, never found a distributor.  According to Paulo Branco, Monteiro’s producer and longtime friend, “If there was ever someone who lived completely free, where life and creativity always intertwined, it was João César Monteiro.  He never conformed to any rules and always brought a sense of ‘madness’ to his work— something he proudly embraced.  That’s why his films are so essential and unique in world cinema.”  A profoundly eccentric actor-director, his films are long, deadpan black comedies, minimally plotted and slow moving, where many consider this morbidly perverse film his masterpiece, often described as a visual poem.  Focused on a solitary character of Monteiro himself, this film introduces us to the alter-ego character of João de Deus (John of God), named after the Portuguese-born patron saint of the destitute, an aged, slim and balding man wearing spectacles, a comic everyman and misfit, or Holy Fool, spending his days wandering between an old boarding house and Lisbon’s historic, decadent neighborhoods.  Verging from a sophisticated artist and European gentleman whispering poetry to a lecherous old man, with an unorthodox and obsessively perverse sexual imagination, his lonely life is peppered with degenerate sexual fantasies that when acted upon produce disastrous results.  João is an incorrigible womanizer, as his erotic fetishes border on depravity, like his leering almost predatory attraction to beautiful young women and his mad obsession with collecting pubic hair, becoming such a controversial and polarizing figure that it’s difficult to feel sympathy. Subtitled “A Portuguese Comedy,” Monteiro explores the idea of whether or not his lecherous protagonist is crazy, or whether he’s being stifled by an insane world, choosing a life of great austerity, living an ascetic life, most of the time feeling imprisoned by the world around him, remaining aloof and isolated, like a stranger in his own country.  Stately and elegant, and often hilarious, Monteiro’s films exhibit a refined satire and social commentary, heavily influenced by the Catholic Church, where he is Portugal’s answer to Spain’s Luis Buñuel, yet less well known and more difficult to appreciate, with plenty of Buñuelian pokes at fascism and religion. 

Beginning as a poet and film critic, arguably the most brilliant and acutely intellectual critic in Portugal, writing several years for the newspaper Público before transitioning to a filmmaker, like most of the French Nouvelle Vague filmmakers, studying at the London Film School, then known as the London School of Film Technique, where this recalls the subliminal messaging and existentialist mindset of Antoine Roquentin, the melancholic and socially isolated intellectual protagonist of Jean-Paul Sartre’s 1938 psychological novel, Nausea.  Monteiro has claimed that all his films are essentially remakes of THE WIZARD OF OZ (1939), explaining there are two possibilities of cinema, the real and the imaginary.  “Dorothy lives in the countryside in Kansas: she’s bored with her daily life and she dreams about another place — and that place is cinema in Technicolor.  In a way, every film I’ve made deals with this kind of feeling — let’s see what Kansas can bring to Oz and what Oz can change in Kansas.”  Winner of the Silver Lion (3rd Place) at the Venice Film Festival, with cinematography by José António Loureiro, shot on 35mm in natural, realistic settings, such as streets, buildings, and interior rooms, where the long opening shot from the water overlooking the city shows us Lisbon in a way we’ve never seen before.  With an introductory acknowledgment of the music of both Schubert and Vivaldi, each adds a degree of cultural refinement, starting with the familiar refrains of a theme so prominently featured in Kubrick’s BARRY LYNDON (1975), Barry Lyndon, Trio op 100 (Schubert) YouTube (4:16), branching out to the delicately ethereal, Schubert - Notturno in E flat major, Op. 148, D. 897 YouTube (9:45), before reaching for the religious sublime, Vivaldi: Stabat Mater YouTube (19:01).  Living in a cheap room in a family boarding house in the old section of the city’s waterfront, the film starts out in a state of miserablism and discomfort, as João is besieged by bedbugs in the middle of the night, growing contemptuous of their mere existence, disappearing from view at the first sign of light, like blood-sucking vampires, a reference that comes into play later in the film, yet taking a certain amount of pleasure in bringing the problem to his tyrannical landlady Violeta (Manuela de Freitas), an insufferable woman who offers a speech about the rich history of the building, once home to prominent dignitaries, yet the last thing she needs is an infestation, so immediate action is necessary.  João takes great satisfaction in hearing the crackling sound of the mattress burning, as the tiny little critters meet their demise.  While it’s also clear this is a seedy establishment, João is a Quixotic sensualist, a grizzled, depressive man living a solitary life, where his misadventures suggest an isolated Dostoyevskian outcast, with his bitter, internalized rants playing out like Notes from Underground, finding humor and eroticism in a way that no one else could imitate.  Bleakly absurdist, our unlikely protagonist ruminates on illness and the prospect of death.  As if to stave off the inevitable, he develops a Peeping Tom fixation on the landlady’s virtuous, clarinet-playing daughter Julieta (Teresa Calado), who is thirty years younger, stealing peeks though her door at night or while taking a bath, and then afterwards he inhales and drinks her soapy bath water, taking extreme pleasure at finding a single pubic hair, enamored by the intimacy it represents. 

Having no visible means of support, João shows no signs of remorse with taking money from his 70-year old mother (Maria Ângela Violeta), who still works as a cleaning lady, while he’s not above earning money by nefarious means, like blackmail, suggesting he’s a thoroughly unethical character, developing a healthy contempt for those around him, even stealing money from Mimi (Sabina Sacchi), the neighboring prostitute who has just died, taking money hidden away to pay for her daughter’s upbringing.  Suddenly feeling invincible with his newfound wealth, he initially flatters Julieta with promises before turning into a seduction/rape scene, cutting to an abrupt image of a Beethoven bust, shot from João’s point of view, while Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony ferociously erupts on the soundtrack as he literally pounces on her just as her mother walks in, throwing all his money at her half-naked body, quickly running away in disgrace.  In one of the more hilarious showstopper scenes of the film, all the women of the neighborhood can be heard opening their window shutters to communally share salacious gossip on the incident while offering obscenities about what a raging pervert he is, unsparing in their graphic detail.  Suddenly confronted by the harshness of the city, things go off the rails after that, as João becomes a homeless tramp, sleeping on garden benches and lining up for soup kitchens, which gives Monteiro the opportunity to document the lives of the homeless elderly in Lisbon.  But when he inexplicably starts strutting around in a stolen military uniform, he is arrested and sent to a psychiatric sanitarium.  Of note, Monteiro was locked up in a psychiatric institution for a brief period of time in his youth.  The mood of the film shifts substantially, as he’s suddenly surrounded by mental instability, making him seem more level-headed and sane than they are, but of dubious moral character.  The boarding house and the asylum can be read as metaphoric extensions of the nation, both ruled by eccentric yet strong-willed authoritarians.  One of the more remarkable cinematic references comes into play as Monteiro reaches back into cinema history, specifically Murnau’s NOSFERATU (1922), where Count Orlok’s physical resemblance to João is striking, suggesting those with exquisitely fine aristocratic manners can carry out despicable criminal acts, becoming, in effect, monsters that walk amongst us.  Equally as tantalizing is a moment when he and Mimi have a sexual encounter, but the camera moves away from them and shifts to a slow pan of the giant figure of a man in a sleek white uniform, who is none other than Erich von Stroheim in BLIND HUSBANDS (1919), a Chevalier and dapperly dressed ladies man who comes to personify his suddenly inflated ego.  After escaping from the asylum, we’re left with the German Expressionist image of João rising from the sewer ducts in a cloud of smoke, as if rising from a coffin, resembling the shadowy image of Murnau’s creepy monster, with the past effectively merging into the present, with the early morning sound of blackbirds heard singing over the end credits.      

Recordações da Casa Amarela (João César Monteiro, 1989) entire film may be seen here with English subtitles, YouTube (1:57:20)