I was mildly aroused after seeing Francois Ozon’s The Stranger during last fall’s Venice Film Festival.
It’s a bone–dry but highly disciplined and generally absorbing adaptation of the 1942 Albert Camus novella. I felt flattered that I was among the first to see it. A good adult film for viewers with a certain degree of patience and working brains. The black-and-white cinematography is to die for, etc.
It was clearly no blockbuster, but as I left the Venice screening I was figuring that The Stranger would attract attentive smarthouse auds when it opened, I presumed, sometime in the winter or early spring of ‘26.
Music Box Films will open it super-limited on 4.3.26. (I think.) But the Music Box website doesn’t even mention it. The early April opening is some kind of well-guarded secret. The apparent plan or idea is to keep everyone in the dark. Smother the Ozon baby in the crib.
HE’s review was posted on 9.2.25.
