Prolific writer-director François Ozon (When Autumn Falls, The Crime is Mine) adapts Albert Camus’ classic existentialist novel.
Algiers, 1938. An unassuming man in his early thirties, Meursault attends his mother’s funeral, at which he does not cry. The next day, he begins a casual affair with Marie and slips back into his daily routine. Then, one blisteringly hot afternoon, an inexplicable, tragic event occurs on a beach; one that will see Meursault’s moral standing brought into question. Voisin is terrific as the unnervingly disaffected Meursault. Shot in cool black-and-white, the film brings a contemporary slant to Camus’ tale of alienation, capturing a charged society – 1930s French-colonised Algeria – on the boil.
