The Stranger
(L'Étranger)

Algiers, 1938. Meursault, a quiet and unassuming office worker, attends his mother’s funeral without shedding a tear. The following day, he begins a casual affair with Marie, an old acquaintance, effortlessly slipping back into his daily routine. An emotional detachment from the people closest to him signals his utter indifference to the events of his life. His blithe existence is disrupted, however, when his neighbor Raymond draws Meursault into his shady dealings, leading to a tragic confrontation on a blistering hot day at the beach that lands Meursault in jail on murder charges.

A sense of inevitability and dread pervades the existential drama as it shifts between scenes depicting the wretched prison conditions Meursault endures as he awaits his trial and the succession of events that landed him there. Striking black-and-white cinematography, lensed by Manuel Dacosse, a frequent collaborator of director François Ozon, is evocative of the period setting while also lending the film an expansive timelessness. Effortlessly embodying Meursault’s aimless indifference, Benjamin Voisin (winner of the Silver Hugo for Best Performance for The Quiet Son at the 60th Chicago International Film Festival) commands in the lead as a man with nothing and yet everything to lose.

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