Benjamin Voisin on reading sad philosophy and smoking heavily for The Stranger

Is this the French-est role any Frenchman could play?

Benjamin Voisin can be seen as Meursault in The Stranger, François Ozon’s new film version of Albert Camus’ existentialist classic, which required him to do a hell of a lot of sitting around smoking.

Something which, judging by the chain-smoking he’s doing on the end of our call, he didn’t have to work hard at.

Indeed he says, “François tells me, ‘You already have something in you for the character,’ and I say, ‘Is it that I am naive or I don't trust in God?’ He says, ‘You're a smoker.’”
Voisin is good at the smoking but also astonishingly good as this character, one of the most famous in all literature.

Meursault is a man who cares nothing for society’s expectations, telling the truth at all times, which draws curiosity when he expresses no emotion at his mother’s funeral, and then a trial when he kills an Arab on the beach because of “the sun.”
To get into the role, the far more garrulous and likeable Voisin says he, “Read a lot of very sad philosophy like Nietzsche, like Schopenhauer.

A lot of beautiful sentences but very dark.

Like Schopenhauer said once, ‘there are only two movements [emotional states] in life: when you are bored and when you are sad.’ So I became a little bit depressive for 4 months.

And Francois said to me, ‘OK, don't move.

Be destroyed, be depressive, be whatever you want, but I've just seen the character and I want that to be in the movie, so continue to read all your sad stuff.”
He didn’t socialise much with the other cast members for this reason “I was in my room watching the floor” and for duties in front of the camera, he was told by Ozon about legendary director Robert Bresson’s thoughts on acting: “He said there are two ways to act.

There is the actor and the model.

The model doesn't do anything.

He just lives.

The actor is building something.

He's acting.

And Francois said to me, ‘If you act, it's going to be a disaster.

You have to be the guy.

I can’t film you if you're acting.’”
He loved worked with Ozon, “he’s like a little kid playing with his dolls, and he’s screaming.

He’s really loud on set, but I love it, he’s a wonderful director, and after all, there is only passion.” But most of all he loved this fresh take on the story, which reinforces individual thinking - “I hope people look at the film and see it would be wonderful to not accept what people want you to do.” - and firmly takes on a post-colonial perspective, actually giving a name and identity to the previously anonymous Arab.

“This is a story of a guy who killed an Arab and didn't cry at his mother’s funeral.

And we say to him, it's OK [to kill an Arab], there is plenty Arabs, but why don't you cry at your own mother's funeral?

I think there is a big echo in our world.”
29 year old Paris-born Voisin has been a building a substantial body of work on stage and screen after being schooled at France’s National Academy of Dramatic Arts , including Ozon’s Summer of ‘85.

But The Stranger will surely break him over to international attention.

Next up is a big Netflix movie with Vincent Cassell about Quasimodo.

But has Meursault stayed with him?

“After the movie, I said, how wonderful is it to say ‘I don't know’.

And strangely, how much cooler you can be and truly be yourself when you say, ‘Man, I don't wanna talk shit.’ Sometimes you have to say I don't know, and I think if everybody say it to each other or to themselves, it will be a better world…”