the language of the devil?” So [the film is] very personal. It’s life
material, only served in order to create something.
Where did you find Tom Mercier, who plays Yoav, and what
was the process of working with him on the character?
I think when you do a movie that’s based on your own life, even
20 years later, you kind of feel like it should have been you [on
screen], even though it’s impossible. You feel as if you give up
something––like somehow, if it were me, it would be even better.
So you need someone really different, marvelous, almost leg-
endary, in order to make you give away your conception of your
younger self, to abandon it, to a totally different version. And Tom
is a different version––I was not like this when I was his age.
People say that we look a bit alike, but otherwise, no, this is
not me. He had never acted in a film before. I cast him from an
audition––the first scene of the movie was the first time he had
ever faced a camera. And it was marvelous because he was totally
naïve and ignorant––he didn’t know anything about anything.
He didn’t know that the camera had a lens. At one point he was
behind the camera thinking that we were shooting him. But
when he came to the audition, the casting director and I were
amazed, because of his strange obsession for details, for the details
in the script. He knows every letter, he analyzes––he’s a little bit like
religious people in Israel who only read the Bible because they
believe if you read the Bible enough, if you get deeper and deeper,
all the wisdom you’ll ever need will be revealed. He’s not one of
those actors that suggests other things that aren’t in the script. For
him, everything’s in there, and if you dig deep enough you’ll find it.
And at the same time, it’s inside this obsession that he finds total
liberty. The places he takes the script are so extreme that in the end
it becomes a form of total liberation.
If having a soul or mind is to see things differently, I’ve never
seen someone who sees the way he does, in the most instinctive
way. I think that at all times he’s inside truth, rooted inside the
truth. But then he gets so near to the truth that you have to ask
yourself how is he not burned by this fire.
Is it also in the editing where some of the more unresolved
plot or character elements are found?
That is also something that existed in the script already, but the
more I focused on the film, the more I felt that it’s a film about
a certain existential condition, an existential music, a kind of
mood, a state of mind—which is at the same time intellectual,
emotional, physical, and verbal. So I told myself that I should do
whatever I could do to emphasize this state of mind or create
contradictions that could stress this theme even more. And
whatever doesn’t should be left behind.How do you prepare or map out the film’s setpieces, like
Yoav dancing on the bar?
For me these are the most moving moments of filmmaking, and
the moments when you start to understand what the camera will
have to say about all this. In preparation, I need to fill my head
with cinematic images and cinematic movements, so I watch
around 12 or 13 films a day. But I don’t watch them from begin-
ning to end. I fast-forward until I see something that interests
me. It’s unfair of course, but in a way, when you do it like this, at
a certain point it becomes like a radiography of cinema. You
throw away the plot, and then you deconstruct the cinematic
structure and you understand that 99 percent of the films look
more or less like the same movie. Suddenly it’s like looking at the
nuances between Perrier and Evian, and it becomes very clear
which films are in the 1 percent. Not that it’s your duty to do
something special, but I think that if you try to grasp the truth of
the moment then something special can transpire. In my head
the truth of the moment is connected to its chaotic aspect.You mentioned that you came to cinema somewhat late.
I never touched a camera until I arrived at film school, when
I was already 26 years old. The professional aspects of cinema
never seduced me, never attracted me. And this relates to
Synonyms, because it was in Paris where I discovered cinema. It’s
where my friend Emile introduced me to cinema. We went to see
films together, and I couldn’t wait for the film to end so we could
talk about it. And he explained to me basic terms and techniques
like shot, sequence shot, cut, mise en scène. I was so isolated that
I thought the main thing that people do in their lives is to talk
about mise en scène! So it was a strange process of discovery, but
for me, from the very beginning, cinema was simply a wonderful
option to express something.and crème fraîche—every single day, and listen to his hypnotic
diary-like narration that teeters between nihilism and transcen-
dence. The film’s identification with Yoav’s point of view takes on
a disturbing connotation when he fires an imaginary assault rifle
at the Notre Dame Cathedral (whose major fire in April coincided
with this film’s French release) while humming the tune of “Sym-
pathique.” A reenactment of his time in the army, it also reflects
his schizophrenic disconnect from reality and imbues the narrative
with a sense of impending doom. But unlike Travis Bickle’s, Yoav’s
extremist tendencies do not yield a massacre. His is an ideological
rebellion against hypocrisy and shallowness, such as when he
attends a classical music concert featuring Caroline as an oboist
and criticizes the ensemble for not standing up for their work.
Convinced that he was chosen to save their crumbling Republic,
Yoav angrily confronts the musicians with the values of the
French Revolution. But they vanquish his voice with their instru-
ments and resume their show, leaving him helplessly subdued.
Like all of Lapid’s movies, Synonyms concludes on a tragic note
of defeat as Yoav finds himself compelled to return to Israel. The
bookend image of him bumping his torso against the closed door
of Emile and Caroline’s apartment epitomizes the film’s devastat-
ing blend of cruelty and innocence, and likens Yoav’s journey to
an infinite loop. A cri de cœur as much as a political essay, Syn-
onyms manages to be deeply affecting without ever resorting to
pathos, creating a simultaneously intimate and cerebral viewing
experience through an alternately mobile and static mise en scène.
While minutely attuned to its protagonist’s heightened interior
world, it offers a space of projection for everyone torn between
embracing and renouncing their national belonging.
Although bitterly parting ways with Yoav, Synonyms leaves us
with the hope that he will find salvation through writing. With
an impulse of purification, Yoav donates his stories to Emile for
inclusion in his book, but ends up taking them back, realizing
that they make up the core of his identity. It is the implication
that Paris’s hardships have unleashed Yoav’s creative soul and
sparked his desire to become an artist—a vocation of which
Lapid himself is living proof. Yonca Taluis a filmmaker living in Paris. She grew up in Istanbul
and graduated from NYU Tisch.July-August 2019| FILMCOMMENT| 43