New Cinematic Update Turns Albert Camus’s Iconic ‘Stranger’ Into a Vapid, Gen Z-Pouting Naif

The protagonist of Albert Camus’s classic novella “The Stranger” is essentially a “stranger in a strange land,” to borrow a phrase from the King James Bible. A Frenchman living in colonial Algeria several years before the outbreak of war, he is indifferent not just to social conventions and his own emotional state but to the Arabs around him, eventually killing one in a seemingly senseless act. One of the innovations of the new movie adaptation of the book, also called “The Stranger,” is its occasional emphasis on this disconnect between the French settlers, including main character Meursault, and the native population. French director François Ozon also presents the narrative through black-and-white imagery, an aesthetic choice evoking the past, the character’s dispassionate outlook, and the story’s bleak evocation of fate. Despite these updates and the interesting stylistic conception, the film turns out to be an interminable viewing experience, primarily due to its deadening pace and uninvolving lead performance. In 1967 renowned Italian film director Luchino Visconti helmed the most prominent prior film of the novel. While not entirely successful, that version managed to capture the book’s interior monologue through periodic voiceover narration while contrasting the text’s simple storytelling style with expressive cinematography, lighting, and color. It also helped that Meursault was played by the great Marcello Mastroianni who, while too old for the role, nevertheless brought a sense of disorientation, bewilderment, and desperation to the character. The same cannot be said for actor Benjamin Voisin in the latest adaptation.Looking and behaving more like a fashion model than an actor playing a part, Mr. Voisin is simply miscast as Meursault. Despite his prominent lips and a smoothly sculptural face, the actor mostly fails to impart anything other than blankness, akin to the Gen Z stare with the Gen Z pout. Some might consider this countenance an effective portrayal of insularity, but for this viewer, the stiff, pretty boy remove of the performance did not come across as natural, lived-in, or befitting a character who in the book is in constant dialogue with himself. The moments are scant in which Mr. Voisin’s distracted naif suggests Meursault’s alienation instead of a lack of acting prowess. The fault lies not entirely with Mr. Voisin. Mr. Ozon and his cinematographer Manu Dacosse never find a dramatic compositional mode or visual motifs that work with the black and white to relay an existential condition. Overall the monochromatic photography is blandly picturesque, like a tasteful travel magazine spread. Mr. Ozon could also be accused of fetishizing Mr. Voisin, more interested in the actor’s looks and physique than Meursault’s personality. Furthermore, the film feels like a slog to get through, leading one to wonder whether re-reading Camus’s slim novel might be a quicker and more satisfying experience.The director stays fairly faithful to the book’s structure. Beginning with the death of Meursault’s mother and subsequent wake, the narrative progresses through his relationship with Marie (an earnest Rebecca Marder) and his friendships with neighbors Salamano (Denis Lavant, playing another hoboish figure) and Raymond (an appropriately slimy Pierre Lottin). Eventually, the plot culminates in the murder of an anonymous Arab on a beach. This incident marks the end of the novel’s first section and the beginning of the second, though this strange, momentous act—memorialized in The Cure’s debut single “Killing an Arab”—appears almost perfunctory in Mr. Ozon’s telling. Never does one register the oppressive heat and metaphysical atmosphere of the seaside that Meursault describes as factors in the killing.The film’s second half, like that of the book’s, tracks Meursault’s time in prison and trial for murder. During the latter, the director makes some pointed observations about colonialism and racism, how the French judicial system is more concerned with how Meursault behaved at his mother’s funeral than in the unjust circumstances surrounding the death of a young person of color. Still, a scene Mr. Ozon crafts between Marie and the victim’s sister, whom he names Djemila (Hajar Bouzaouit), strikes one as being alternately righteous, overstated, and contrived, as if it were merely a nod to “The Meursault Investigation,” Algerian author Kamel Daoud’s 2013 retelling of the Camus novel from the perspective of the dead man’s brother. During the second half’s emotional climax, as Meursault tussles with a priest about his lack of faith and unexamined life, Mr. Voisin finally shows some perturbation and grit, and it’s not only due to his scruffy, prison cell appearance. Still, the scene isn’t as powerfully staged as its counterpart in the Visconti version, and the display of passion — its depiction of how there’s more to the character than previously presented — comes too late. Meursault’s “dark night of the soul” cannot save a film suffused with stupor and vapidity instead of terse rationality and fascinating irrationality.

New Cinematic Update Turns Albert Camus’s Iconic ‘Stranger’ Into a Vapid, Gen Z-Pouting Naif

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