When Francois Ozon embarked on the daunting big-screen adaptation of Albert Camus’ “The Stranger” — considered one of France’s literary jewels for the last 80 years — he wanted to give it a contemporary resonance. And not by setting in present times, but rather by contextualizing the story, which unfolds in the early 1940s and depicts life in Algeria, then under French colonial rule.
Benjamin Voisin stars as the novel’s antihero, Meursault, who lives a modest, mindless life in Algiers and ends up in prison after shooting a young Arab man five times. On trial for the crime, Meursault’s unusually detached psyche is dissected by the prosecutor. Instead of being judged for the killing of an Arab man, Meursault is ultimately blamed for showing little emotion at the recent funerals for his late mother and hastily starting a relationship with Marie Cardona (Rebecca Marder). The lushly lensed, black-and-white film marks Ozon’s followup to the thriller “When Fall Is Coming.”
Speaking to Variety ahead of the premiere of “The Stranger” in competition at Venice, Ozon said that what interested him was to not to make a film from the perspective of the 1940s, “but make it with today’s perspective, with the distance we have from this period of French Algeria, and of the colonization, and contextualizing the book a little in the era in which it was written.”
The French helmer tackled adaptations before, notably “Peter Van Kant,” based on Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s play “The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant,” or even “Summer of 85,” based on Aidan Chambers’ “Dance on My Grave” which starred Voisin; but he had never done a project based on such an illustrious novel. “The Stranger” is one of the three-most read French language books of all time, alongside “Les Miserables” and ”The Little Price.” Gaumont (also at Venice with Olivier Assayas’ “The Wizard of the Kremlin’ competing) financed “The Stranger,” produced it with Ozon’s banner Foz, and will release it in France on Oct. 29.
One of France’s best-known auteurs, Ozon has presented most of his films at major festivals, such as Cannes where “Swimming Pool,” “Double Lover” and “Everything Went Fine” premiered in competition. He’s also been at the Berlinale with a raft of films, including “By the Grace of God” which retells the biggest abuse scandal to hit the French Catholic church and won the Grand Jury Prize.
The Venice unspooling marks Ozon’s comeback to Venice nine years after premiering there with ”Franz,” another black-and-white period film. It’s also the second time an adaptation of Camus’ “The Stranger” has played at Venice — 58 years ago, Luchino Visconti’s film, starring Marcello Mastroianni, screened on the Lido.
How did you feel venturing on this ambitious adaptation of Albert Camus’ iconic novel?
“The Stranger” is read all over the world, it’s studied in the United States, it’s been translated into I don’t know how many languages, so it was little daunting. Most of the time, when I adapted novels or plays, they weren’t very well known. Here, tackling a masterpiece felt like a more complex, more nerve-wracking experience.
Was it a project that you had in mind for a long time?
Not really. In fact, at first I had an original subject, which was a film set today, about a young man who is a bit disillusioned, who attempted suicide and detached himself from the world. I didn’t manage to make it, but nevertheless, I was interested in the subject and, somewhat by coincidence, I reread Camus’ book and, as I reread it, I thought to myself: It’s incredible, the book really still resonates today. Above all, it was exactly the themes I wanted to address: This indifference to the world, this way of detaching oneself from things. And then, very naively, I thought to myself, it’s impossible to do, the rights must have been taken. But in fact, the rights were available. And I met the Camus family, his daughter Catherine Camus, who had received many proposals and she trusted me with it. I explained to to her how I wanted to adapt the book.
How did you want to adapt it and how did you manage to convince the Camus family to give you the rights?
What compelled me wasn’t to make a film from the perspective of the 1940s, but make it with today’s perspective, with the distance we have from this period of French Algeria, and of the colonization, and contextualizing the book a little in the era in which it was written.
That’s why I really wanted to start the film with some context, using archive footage and commentary from the period to explain the French perspective of colonization at the time. What’s interesting from today’s viewpoint is that we know what happened between then and now. There was the Algerian War, there was a lot of abuse, there was a lot of suffering, and today, relations between France and Algeria are severed.
Do you think that in that “The Stranger” could be more politically minded than it seems?
Reading it, I had the intuition that, without realizing it, perhaps unconsciously, that Camus was talking precisely about the relationship between France and Algeria in this book. The issue of colonialism has always been complex for him.
It seems that Camus was a bit misunderstood when the book came out.
Some people have criticized him, for example, for the invisibility of the Arab character. The Arab character is never named in the book. For me, it was very important to give him a name. You have to put it in context. I believe that not naming him wasn’t about racism or a desire to make him invisible, it was just a way of characterizing a character. It was a literary technique used at the time, nothing more.
Why did you think Benjamin Voisin was right for this role, which seems so far removed from his real-life personality?
It’s a difficult part because Meursault is an unsympathetic character, but we still have to follow him, watch him, be fascinated by him. So we needed someone with charisma, someone beautiful. And with Benjamin, we worked in that sense to make the character of Meursault enigmatic and exciting to watch, not just unsympathetic.
You’d already worked with Voisin on “Summer 85.” How different was it to direct him in this film?
Yes, in “Summer of ’85,” he played the brooding heartthrob. Here, he really had to play someone who was introverted, and Benjamin is very extroverted in real life. We had to ask him to hold back and get into the character of Meursault, but he did it very well. It was quite exciting, but I think it was exhausting for him. In fact, it was also hard for his co-stars because they wanted to shake him up. His character doesn’t play the social game, so that’s very unsettling. But it means cutting yourself off a little from your co-stars, acting like spectator. I had him read Bresson’s book, “Notes on the Cinematographer” to prepare. Bresson didn’t like actors, he liked models, so he wanted his characters to say their lines flatly, without intonation, without emotion, and it was up to the viewer to project things onto their faces. We worked on that a little bit. Then he immersed himself in Camus’ work, in the book. He did his job as an actor. Then the costumes, the era, that helps you get into a character.
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How did you write the part so that Meursault doesn’t come off as a sociopath?
From today’s perspective, it’s true that his relationship with women and his violence is quite shocking. But I think that if it’s a book that has had such an impact, that still touches people so much, it’s because it tells a story that everyone can identify with. There are moments in our lives when we are out of step with reality and unable to experience emotions fully. The scene of the burial, where he expresses no emotion, I think that really touches teenagers and still touches us today. But it’s true that the character of Meursault is a mythical character in French literature. In England or in the U.S., if you think of an emblematic character, you have Billy Budd. These are the kinds of characters we can project ourselves onto, that we can imagine in many different ways. And it’s quite fascinating because it’s a bit like a blank page. Meursault observes events, he doesn’t express anything, and so it’s up to the viewer to feel things for him.
Still, it seems that the film is filled with men who have questionable behaviors!
Yes, Meursault is a bit toxic with his indifference, then one beats his wife, the other beats his dog. These are not very flattering images of men.
Is that why you fleshed out the female characters in the book, including Marie Cardona, Meursault’s love interest?
As a counterpoint, the female characters play a larger role. I made Marie’s character much more present and conscious of the situation. She tells Meursault: “I want to marry you, but maybe one day you’ll disgust me for the same reasons that you attract me today.” There is a realization there. And then there’s Marie’s confrontation with the “Arab’s” sister, Djamila, who does not exist in the book and highlights the issue of colonization. I would say that it’s the women who carry hope in the film.
How was Rebecca Marder cast for the part of Marie Cardona?
Rebecca accepted right away. She liked the way I wanted to show her, which is the way I see her in real life, with her sensuality and her beauty. She said to me, “This is the first time I’m going to have a real love scene in a film.” She was often given roles as an intellectual, combative woman, and she was interested in expressing another side of her personality and her acting, too. In this film, she plays a young girl who is a typist, who is not particularly intellectual, but who is lively and intelligent, and in love.
There is a lot of sensuality in the film. Was it present in the book?
I’ve spoken with many Camus specialists, I’ve spoken with Camus’ family, and I’ve read his other books, in which there’s always something very sensual. His relationship with Algeria is sensual. It’s the sea, it’s the sun, it’s nature, smells, all that. And what’s interesting about Meursault is that he’s a very paradoxical character. He’s enjoying himself, he’s having fun, he has desire for Marie, he sees the beauty of the world. But all the while, he isn’t able to express that happiness. It’s only at the end of the film, once he’s lost everything, he is able to say: “I realize that I was happy, I broke that happiness.” So there is a lot of sensuality in the book and it was important that this be conveyed in the film. And black-and-white allows that; this rendering of the beauty of the elements, of nature and of places, that sensuality.
Camus is also denouncing the justice system in this book, right?
He’s addressing the absurdity of justice. The whole trial scene is very important in Camus’ work, as it really shows the absurdity of that era. A man is condemned, mainly because he doesn’t play by society’s rules. In other words, he doesn’t feel the emotion he should feel at his mother’s death. That’s what makes it almost a farce.
Why did you decide to make the film in black and white?
I would say that it was both aesthetic and a magnificent artistic choice because it allowed me to create a reconstruction that was closer to reality, because today, the colors where we were filming weren’t necessarily the right colors. So black and white allows you to unify everything. There are many things that work in black and white that don’t work in color. That was it. And for me, it allowed me to immerse myself in the era. It’s a forgotten era, a colonial era that no longer exists, so there’s a sense of a lost world. I thought black and white worked well with that. And then there was also a production concern. The film doesn’t have a very big budget. We had a lot of trouble financing the film.
It was difficult to finance the project even though it’s directed by you and based on a literary masterpiece?
Very naively, I thought to myself, “The Stranger” is a very well-known book. We’ll get the film financed, we’ll do it comfortably. But that wasn’t the case at all. It didn’t stop me from shooting the film the way I wanted to, but we went around to all the platforms and everyone said at first, “Yes, we love what you’re doing. ‘The Stranger’ is my favorite book.” And then finally, when they read the script, they said: “Nothing happens at the beginning, there’s no dialogue.” I said: “You say it’s your favorite book, have you read the book?” It’s like the book. It’s true that I wanted to be faithful to Camus’ radicalism.
Yes, it’s a radical film.
It’s radical, but I think that today, people who go to the cinema want to see radical things. They don’t want to see what they can already see on streaming platforms or on television. I think that these are the films that make an impression and interest audiences today, in my opinion. Of course, there are always issues. So it was very difficult, but in the end, we managed to make the film.
How important was Gaumont in putting the film together?
Gaumont is the company that released “Mon Crime.” I have to say that I was able to make the film thanks to Gaumont because Gaumont was the only group willing to embark on this project. I had my usual partners, France 2 and Canal. But Gaumont really made it possible for the film to be made. They were exemplary because they believed in it right away, I think because of its heritage aspect, and also because we had had this experience with “Mon Crime” together.
But it’s still a film that’s accessible and it’s led by a strong cast.
Now that you’ve seen the film, yes, but for the financiers, it’s black and white and Camus deals with a complicated subject, it’s not very narrative. It’s still the story of a guy who kills an Arab. It’s a philosophical novel, not a classic novel. It’s not “The Count of Monte Cristo.” You know, financiers are very conservative. They look at what has worked recently and they want to reproduce what has worked, they don’t necessarily want to innovate. In this case, it’s true that there was a real risk. It’s a risk to adapt a philosophical work.
Tell me about the music, which plays an important part in “The Stranger.”
Fatima Al Qadiri is a Kuwaiti musician who composed the music for Mati Diop’s “Atlantics,” which I really liked. I contacted her, we didn’t know each other. She had some reservations about the subject matter as a Kuwaiti. But in the end, she understood what I wanted to do and went for it. She created a beautiful, oriental soundtrack, mixing real instruments with electronic music. She brings something that is both reminiscent of oriental music and at the same time more modern and contemporary, creating a slightly haunting atmosphere.
How is it to be back in Venice to present your film in competition?
I’m very happy to be returning to Venice. I was last there with “Franz.” I also find it very moving to think that Visconti, 58 years ago, also presented his version of “The Stranger” in Venice.
