Review: Nadav Lapid’s ‘Synonyms’ is a brilliant, corrosive portrait of a man without a country Yoav (Tom Mercier) forsakes his Israeli identity for a French one in “Synonyms.” (Kino Lorber) Wholehearted in his resolution to erase his Jewish-Israeli origins, he refuses to speak Hebrew and obsessively studies his constant companion, a French dictionary.
As he yells epithets the photographer can’t understand, furious that even his naked body is being seen as Israeli property, it seems like Yoav is finally about to snap. A robbery? That such manufactured indecision proves more arresting than infuriating is a testament to editor Era Lapid, Nadav’s mother, to whom the film is dedicated.Something takes you by surprise in almost every scene, which is par for the course in a movie that postpones its one predictable development for almost a full 90 minutes (there’s no incest here, but Lapid never finds a right angle for the same kind of bizarre love triangle “The Dreamers” executed better). 2019 Réalisé par Nadav Lapid 123 mn avec Tom Mercier, Quentin Dolmaire, Louise Chevillotte. Emile (cat-like “My Golden Days” star Quentin Dolmaire) gives Yoav a mustard-collared peacoat as the first gesture of the homoerotic quid pro quo relationship that forms between them, and Mercier constantly wears it like a Spartan warrior strutting down the runway of a fashion show. Israélien, cela n’est plus possible, Yoav l’a ainsi décidé, il ne le sera plus désormais. Yoav strips nude in the tub, revealing a soldier’s body, and yanks at his genitals. Synonymes (2019), un film de Nadav Lapid. The actor leads at first, but the DP takes over as Yoav inches towards French citizenship, out of one cage and into another. Then, some rustling from the next room over.