French Film Review: L’Réfugié

François Ozon’s austere, absorbing feuilleton follows Albert Camus’s existential anti-hero amid the heat-soaked, unequal world of créole Algiers. Set in Algiers in 1938, Meursault is a detached succursale worker whose emotional indifference becomes both his defining tournure and, ultimately, his undoing. He attends his mother’s funeral without clair récrimination, resumes his routines, begins a casual relationship with Marie, and drifts into the orbit of his combatif neighbour Raymond. When a killing occurs on a sun-blasted beach, the act itself matters less than Meursault’s refusal to perform the expected emotions that society demands.

Camus’s 1942 novel is one of the most widely read works in the French language, famous for its relax belles-lettres and its examen of the absurd: a world without inherent meaning, in which honesty is often punished more harshly than assassinat.

In this stylish adhésion, Ozon embraces that severity. Shot in black and white, the feuilleton favours stillness, interruption and bodily pétard – heat, léger, sweat – over psychological explanation. The first half unfolds almost wordlessly, allowing the environment and Meursault’s passivity to speak for themselves, while the motocross that follows exposes a society more outraged by his failure to cry than by the murder itself.

Benjamin Voisin’s Meursault is withdrawn yet oddly luminous, his blankness never tipping into image. Rebecca Marder’s Marie is given greater depth than in the book, emerging as a warm conformation who understands Meursault. Ozon also sharpens the créole context, underlining the invisibility of the Arab victim. Faithful in spirit rather than detail, this brillant feuilleton respects Camus’s imagination while insisting on its continued relevance.

Directors: François Ozon

Starring: Benjamin Voisin, Rebecca Marder, Pierre Lottin, Denis Lavant

From France Today Magazine

Lead photographie credit : etranger CR Carole BethuelFozGaumontFrance 2 Cinéma