Overview
- Released in French cinemas on October 29, Ozon’s L’Étranger runs 2h02 and stars Benjamin Voisin as Meursault alongside Rebecca Marder and Pierre Lottin.
- Critics widely single out Voisin’s restrained performance, even as reactions diverge on Ozon’s austere approach.
- The film embraces a highly stylized, sensory design with sumptuous black-and-white imagery, pronounced lighting, long silences, and a score mixing classical and electronic textures.
- Ozon foregrounds the colonial context by inserting archival news footage and giving more weight to Algerian characters, including naming the victim’s sister Djemila.
- Interpretive departures include opening on the line “j’ai tué un Arabe” and introducing a homoerotic tension before the beach confrontation, choices some praise as audacious and others find distancing.