When Albert Camus’s The Stranger was first published in 1942, Europe was in the midst of World War II, and Algeria was a French colony that would not gain independence until two decades later. The book tells the story of a young Frenchman named Meursault living in Algiers who kills a young Arab during a hot summer afternoon in a manner more casual than premeditated. Any other settler might have received a lenient sentence under such circumstances (there is enough ground to argue self-defense), but the man, in his inability to display legible emotions, is perceived as inhuman. Thus, Meursault is judged not so much for the facts of his crime as for entirely subjective minutiae shared as collective opinion—what matters more is that he did not cry publicly at his mother’s funeral than the death of the nameless victim.

With existential questions surrounding the conditions of freedom, the arbitrariness of justice, and the costly price of human individuality, The Stranger is considered one of the emblematic novels of modernity. (With all its Eurocentric bias, and perhaps precisely because of it, it has inspired vital anti-colonialist responses in both criticism and other literature.) It is also material that easily lends itself to adaptation, while its themes and story remain culturally and politically relevant. It is therefore surprising how little it has been explored in cinema, which allows the most recent adaptation, directed by François Ozon, to avoid the burden of comparison and to easily aspire to be considered definitive. (The 1967 adaptation by Luchino Visconti, by contrast, is regarded as one of that director’s “minor” works.)

With sober black-and-white cinematography and a straightforward approach, the adaptation begins with a blank-faced Meursault (Benjamin Voisin), already imprisoned in a temporary cell shared with Arab men, admitting that he is there for having killed an Arab. The film then reintroduces Meursault one year earlier, before his fall from grace, as a tired and drowsy man after hours of travel to the retirement home where he had placed his mother some time ago. She has died, and although all preparations are in place for her burial, the son’s presence is required for the proceedings. Meursault encounters a range of figures: the director explaining the arrangements; the housekeeper offering him coffee; and the elderly residents who knew his mother, including one who had been her suitor. These casual encounters will later prove crucial.

Back in Algiers, where Meursault lives and works, he spends the afternoon at a segregated beach where natives are not allowed, and there he reconnects with Marie (Rebecca Marder), a typist with whom he seems to share a past. They go to the cinema to watch a comedy by Fernandel—she laughs at the jokes while he remains indifferent—and then he invites her to his apartment, beginning a formal relationship. If Meursault has so far appeared laconic in speech, dismissive in action, and emotionally detached, in intimacy he seems quite passionate and physically committed. This contrast is not overly emphasized by Ozon, but it becomes one of many clues for the viewer to form their own judgments when the time comes.

By helping a neighbor (Pierre Lottin), a pimp who has beaten one of his Arab lovers and provoked violent retaliation from her brothers, Meursault ends up caught in the middle of the conflict with a gun in his pocket and a chance encounter on a beach in which he shoots to kill upon seeing a drawn knife. During his ensuing trial, the case increasingly becomes about deciphering why a man acts and speaks contrary to expectations. It turns out that in this particular world, facts depend on feelings.

Narratively, with a reverent script by the director, Ozon’s vision is quite faithful to the novel—perhaps suspiciously so at first glance. But on closer inspection, it is filled with details that enrich and contextualize the status of colonial France in Algeria through a critical lens: The film begins with the title written in Arabic before appearing in French and ends with the grave of the young man killed by Meursault bearing a clear name on its headstone. Throughout, we also see signs marking segregated spaces and hear casual remarks from French characters about the native population. In this way, it deepens the irony of a society that judges a man for his apparent inability to feel in a territory where everyone blindly exercises a far more lethal symbolic violence every day.

Voisin’s performance deserves special attention given the difficulty of embodying Camus’s character, full of complexities and contradictions. The actor masters minimal gestures, and the director brings the camera close enough for us to observe them, allowing for a more objective verdict on Meursault as an individual. This is an ordinary man who feels and suffers in accordance with his own individuality, but whose aversion to performative emotion or wasted words places him in a compromising position. They—actor and director—gracefully internalize Camus’s central thesis without overelaboration: An individual’s freedom is more subject to the judgments of others than we may suspect.

The Stranger is a curious but welcome addition to Ozon’s filmography, an eclectic director whose next move is always unpredictable but consistently marked by irreverence—or at least playfulness—and a sensual gaze. That sensuality remains here, albeit subdued, aided by the cinematography of Manu Dacosse, where sunlight overexposes bodies and landscapes at a dangerous threshold between the seductive and the oppressive. If the strength of the story were not enough, this film is worth attending to precisely for its stimulating mise-en-scène. One might not think the work of Camus would interest filmmakers so enamored with form as Ozon—and before him, Visconti—but perhaps all great books, in their passage to the screen, deserve someone who not only seeks to tell good stories, but who never neglects how to look at them with some degree of desire.