"Ozon's 'The Stranger' is the film for the Easter weekend at the cinema
François Ozon's long-awaited new film, based on the famous book of the same name, arrives in cinemas
François Ozon adapts Albert Camus: the French director, famous for such beautiful films as 'Le temps qui reste' or 'Young Beauty', has directed one of the most ambitious products of his career with 'The Stranger', the big star of the weekend in cinemas.
The challenge was not an easy one, not least because in 1967 the text had already been brought to the cinema by a certain Luchino Visconti with Marcello Mastroianni as the performer in a transposition that, it must be emphasised, was certainly not among the great Italian author's most successful works.
Set in 1938 in Algiers, 'The Stranger' features Meursault, a quiet, modest clerk in his thirties, who attends his mother's funeral without shedding a tear. The next day he starts a casual affair with Marie, a colleague, and quickly returns to his usual routine. Soon, however, his daily life is disrupted by his neighbour, Raymond Sintès, who drags him into his shady business dealings, until tragedy strikes on a beach on a hot day.
"My maternal grandfather was an examining magistrate in Bône (now Annaba), Algeria, and in 1956 he had escaped an attack, an event that accelerated my family's return to mainland France," Ozon revealed at last year's Venice Film Festival, where the film was screened in competition, adding how he realised during this filming how all French families have a connection to Algeria and how heavy the silence hanging over this shared history is.
