Movie Review - Synonyms

Language is an important part of identity and nationality. The language a person speaks and especially how they speak it says a lot about who he or she is. The conversation changes when it comes to immigrants. It changes for people who leave the country in which they were born and raised in order to go live permanently in a foreign or totally different country. If that different country has people speaking a different language, then the immigrant has choices to make. The immigrant can refuse to learn the different language and find a way to live in a bubble. Most immigrants though choose to assimilate. Yet, that assimilation comes in various levels and degrees.

Whatever the level or degree, that assimilation does require learning the different language. Many immigrants simply become bilingual. Some can become fairly fluent. Some can struggle with the second language. No matter, a lot of the immigrants still retain much, if not all their native language and continue embracing their native tongue as a point of pride and patriotism. Writer-director Nadav Lapid presents a character that doesn't have that pride or patriotism.

Tom Mercier in his screen debut stars as Yoav, an immigrant from Israel who has arrived in Paris, France. Being Israeli, he was raised to speak Hebrew. Yet, he has made a rule that he won't ever speak a word of Hebrew ever again. He buys a French dictionary. He repeats French words and phrases over and over. He also is adamant about giving up his heritage. It's evident even when relatives from Israel call him. The question is why. He seems to hate his country of origin. Those reasons stem from childhood experiences, as well as experiences in the Israeli army as a soldier.

Unfortunately, the film doesn't interrogate the why behind Yoav's adamant rule with an adequecy to make me fully understand his choice, the intricacies or implications of it. Over the past decade, I've seen several films that have been critical of Israel, its government or military, such as Waltz with Bashir (2008) and Foxtrot (2017), but, in the same time period, I've seen several films that have been critical of the United States government. If a movie was made about an American who abandoned his country to live in exile in France or anywhere, denouncing his own language, culture and family completely, I would need some interrogation of that.

This film also doesn't interrogate why France. Of all the countries to which he could have immigrated, why France? He thinks it's a great country, but it's not the only one. Clearly, he has some connection. He knew where the key was to a really nice, Parisian apartment. He also easily gets a job at the Israeli embassy in Paris. How he knew where that key was and how he got a job or why he got that specific job are never explained, unless I missed something. Yoav does speak some English, but not as well as French. Yet, it's a question of why he didn't go to England or the United States.

The rest of the film follows him trying to assimilate to life in France. We also see him struggle to make money, so that he can survive and be somewhat self-sufficient. His feelings about his home country affect his job at the embassy. He loses it and has to find other things to stay afloat, including eating and not getting kicked out France. This involves him having to do things that might seem degrading or low level. In that, the film provides insight on the struggles of immigrants trying to keep above water. That is perhaps all I can take away from this otherwise bizarre film.

Lapid's film doesn't have a plot or a A-to-B-to-C narrative. This film is more a character study where we get vignettes of Yoav that are supposed to reveal what kind of a person he truly is. Ostensibly, that person is someone who is either self-hating or so disillusioned by where he originates that it has made him desperate to distance himself from it. It also has made him somewhat bitter and a bit angry, which is really only revealed at the very end of the film.

Up until then, Yoav is not easily read. He just seems to want to be French. What that actually means or how it's any different from being anything else isn't made clear. Maybe it means being cultured in some way because things fall apart when he bad-mouths a Classical orchestra concert, but that has nothing to do specifically with being French. All of a sudden, it becomes about Yoav being a jerk for no reason when the majority of this film he's kind of a cipher of a character or a kind of drifter who isn't that expressive.

One thing that cannot be ignored though is the undercurrent of homoeroticism. Yoav isn't gay, but this film puts Yoav in moments where there feels like same-sex attraction is bubbling beneath the surface. Most of it appears directed at Emile, played by Quentin Dolmaire. Emile is a young Parisian writer whom Yoav befriends. There are other instances with others. However, any actual sexuality or apparent romance is directed at women, including Caroline, played by Louise Chevillotte.

The director can't help though but shoot the actor with such a homoerotic gaze. The opening sequence in fact was reminiscent of the homoerotic Taxi Zum Klo (1980) where the protagonist is outside his apartment with absolutely no clothes. Here, Yoav isn't locked out, but his nudity becomes an awkward and inconvenient thing. It's an interesting way to start this film. This man is stripped bare and is essentially reborn. His rebirth comes in the following scene where he's curled up in a ball in a bathtub and literally has to be carried out of it unconscious like a baby. Yet, the director doesn't stop there with the homoeroticism. He later has Yoav turn to pornography and his pornographer is played by Christophe Paou who was one of the stars of the very homoerotic Stranger By the Lake (2014).

The film seems to have a special fascination with Yoav's penis. Lapid's camera delights in showing his genitalia over and over. An argument could be made that Lapid is making a point, as later Yoav is compared to a rooster, which is referred to as a "cock," a word that also means penis. I'm not exactly sure what the point about the rooster is though. Yet, it is there.

Not Rated but contains full-frontal male nudity and sexual situations.
Running Time: 2 hrs. and 3 mins.

In select cities. Available on DVD and VOD on February 25.