A new adaptation of Albert Camus’s L’Étranger is reopening old scars about France’s colonial past — and not everyone agrees on what the story truly means.
More than eighty years after its publication, Albert Camus’s L’Étranger (known in English as The Outsider) continues to stir debate around the world. The novel remains one of the most studied, most quoted, and most divisive works in French literature.
While many readers regard it as a masterpiece of existential thought, others see in it a troubling silence surrounding France’s colonization of Algeria. Perhaps this is why, despite its fame, the book has rarely been adapted for film or television. As one critic at Cult News quipped, attempting to bring it to the screen is "like climbing the Himalayas."
Ozon's bold vision
French director François Ozon has taken on that challenging ascent with a visually striking black-and-white adaptation that revives old arguments about what Camus was really trying to say—and what he chose to leave unsaid—about colonial Algeria, which fought a long war of independence ending in 1962. Ozon's film, set for UK release next year, received mixed early reviews. Viewers describe it as elegant yet heavy, mirroring the quiet detachment of its protagonist, Meursault, portrayed by Benjamin Voisin as a French settler in Algiers.
In Camus’s story, Meursault shows no grief at his mother’s funeral and later kills an unnamed Arab man on a sunbleached beach with shocking emotional indifference. This stoicism leads society to condemn him not only for murder but for failing to display what it deems proper humanity and morality. The execution by guillotine seals his fate, but critics have long argued whether he is punished for the crime itself or for not conforming to social expectations.
Revisiting failed attempts
The only major earlier film adaptation came in 1967 from Italian director Luchino Visconti, starring Marcello Mastroianni. Visconti had wanted Alain Delon for the lead role but was reportedly overruled by studio executives, and the final product disappointed most audiences. Since then, directors have largely avoided touching Camus’s enigmatic tale—until now.
Perspectives on meaning and morality
Nedjib Sidi Moussa, a political scientist and expert on Algeria, praised Ozon for capturing the essence of Camus’s concept of the absurd. He explained that Meursault is not condemned for killing an Arab—colonial justice of the time would not have sentenced a European for killing a local. Rather, Meursault is punished for violating moral and social codes: not mourning, committing adultery, and showing no faith. This clash between individual freedom and colonial values, Sidi Moussa said, lies at the heart of Camus’s critique. The novel isn’t anti-colonial in a modern activist sense but rather a mirror of a society weighted by contradiction.
Camus himself lived those contradictions. Born in colonial Algeria to poor pied noir parents of European descent, he enjoyed rights denied to most Arabs and Berbers under French rule. His perspective as both insider and outsider continues to complicate how his work is read today.
Ozon includes delicate hints at the dehumanizing effects of colonialism—on both colonized and colonizer. As Sidi Moussa put it, the film subtly makes those undertones resonate with a modern audience without turning into a sermon. "It reconstructs the story in a way that speaks to today,” he said. “It’s quite skillfully done."
Mixed critical reception
Not everyone agrees. Jacques Déniel, a cinema programmer writing for Causeur magazine, found Ozon’s film visually impressive but spiritually hollow. "Ozon oscillates between loyalty to the source—Meursault’s coldness and emotional emptiness—and outright betrayal through a politically correct reinterpretation," he wrote. "Where Camus found absurdity in man’s confrontation with the world, Ozon replaces it with decorative realism. He doesn’t adapt Camus; he comments on him."
The enduring riddle of L’Étranger
Catherine Brun, a literature professor at the Sorbonne, argues the story’s ambiguity is its power: everyone sees what they wish in it. "The novel remains an enigma where silences matter as much as words," she said, pointing out its opaque stance on France’s colonial enterprise. "Camus can be read from either side of the debate. The text mirrors society’s divisions. Everyone uses it to support their argument—no one can declare the final truth."
Camus died young, in a 1960 car crash at 46, but the questions his work raises refuse to die. His daughter, Catherine Camus, now 80, said she appreciated Ozon’s effort but disliked his addition of a new major character—the murdered man’s sister, Djemila, shown mourning at a grave inscribed with her brother’s name in Arabic. Neither the sister nor the victim is named in Camus’s novel. "It contradicts the spirit of the book," she said. "I think Ozon included that ending to satisfy current fashions in political correctness."
Ozon, however, defended his choice. He said he persuaded Catherine Camus to trust him after visiting her home in Lourmarin, where her father once lived and wrote. He acknowledged the immense weight of responsibility: "Adapting a masterpiece that every reader already imagines in their own way was a huge challenge," he told the European Film Awards.
Giving Djemila more presence, he explained, was like tugging on a narrative thread that Camus had woven but never pulled. By giving her a voice, Ozon sought to highlight what had been invisible—the silence surrounding the murdered man. "Through her, we witness how colonized individuals were erased even within their own tragedies," he said. "Camus sensed the disconnect between the two worlds—they shared the same space but not the same humanity."
And this is where the debate reignites: Did Ozon modernize the story responsibly, or distort its meaning to fit contemporary sensibilities? Does giving the Arab victim a family and a name repair an old injustice—or does it overwrite the very ambiguity that makes Camus’s work timeless?
What do you think? Should filmmakers honor a text’s original silence, or challenge it to reflect today’s moral lens? Share your thoughts—this may be one adaptation that divides audiences as sharply as the novel once divided readers.
