242. Israeli director Nadav Lapid’s French/Israeli film “Synonymes” (Synonyms) (2019): A disturbing tale of extreme alienation and nihilism, contrasting the social realities of Israel with that of France
S ynonyms ’ protagonist Yoav (Tom Mercier) is an Israeli Jew who grew up with his parents in Israel and has been through the mandatory military training and perfected his skills to the extent he can shoot with his sophisticated automatic machine gun to rhyme with musical pieces just for the fun of it and even claims to have perforated Arab terrorists with his shooting skills. That was Yoav’s past, glimpses of which are briefly shown in the film. The Yoav you see for most of the 2 hour-long Synonyms is a young man so disillusioned with his native land, his parents, his native tongues (Yiddish and Hebrew), and the Israeli armed forces that he has chosen flee his country and start a new life in France by mastering the French language with the aid of a dictionary. Yoav robbed of all his belongings almost freezes to death in an empty apartment While the original script, co-written by director Nadav Lapid and another individual named Haim Lapid (who might or might not be related)...