HEADING L'Étranger (The Stranger)SUBHEADING New Francois Ozon movie scans a bit like a perfume commercialAlbert Camus’ 1942 novel L'Étranger is essentially impossible to adapt in another medium. I guess that’s because his gift is that he disappears behind the camera—he’s not a philosophising auteur, but a steady craftsman. But then again we feel his hands warping this narrative... Did we really need the anticipatory flash-forward shots of Meursault's imprisonment? In these senses, Ozon’s adaptation is merely contradictory—and one wishes that somebody was thinking a little harder behind the camera. On that album, the songs were longer, sprawling, and more sincere—it even carried some synthpop influence, and was all the more successful for it.