FILM
Imagine There’s No Countries
Tom Mercier plays an Israeli veteran madly adrift in Paris
BY STEVE ERICKSON
“Synonyms,” shot in
France by director
Nadav Lapid, is
about a young Israeli
man, Yoav (Tom Mercier), who
tries to exile himself not just from
his birth country but from his native
language, as well. The fi lm gets
its name from Yoav’s habit of walking
down Paris streets muttering
lists of French synonyms, trying to
polish his knowledge of the tongue.
He refuses to speak a word of Hebrew;
when his dad calls from the
airport, Yoav talks to him in English.
“Synonyms” resists easy interpretation,
especially because it
places so much emphasis on the
intense physicality of Mercier’s performance.
It’s willing to be a mess
at times. But it also avoids becoming
a simple synonym about Israeli
or Jewish identity.
Yoav gets shut out in the cold
while naked in the opening of “Synonyms.”
Upon arrival in France,
his belongings are stolen and he
learns that his apartment is completely
empty. Surprisingly, he
quickly befriends the couple Emile
(Quentin Dolmaire) and Caroline
ran mad
Quentin Dolmaire and Tom Mercier in Nadav Lapid’s “Synonyms.”
(Louise Chevillotte). He insists on
making a new start in France.
However, he can’t disconnect from
Israel. He gets work through the Israeli
Embassy. He can’t fi nd a fulltime
job, however, and winds up
performing in porn. His behavior
grows increasingly unhinged.
The fi lm describes a variation on
a real phenomenon. Israel drafts
KINO LORDER
18-year-old men for three years of
military service. When discharged,
they’re given a payment amounting
to several thousand US dollars
and a good number use it to head
to India for drug binges. Berlin is
another popular destination. As it
happens, Lapid based the fi lm on
his experience in the early 2000s.
Like Yoav, he moved to Paris and
tried to reject the Hebrew language.
He credits this time with perceiving
“cinema as essential, absolutely
vital.” But he eventually moved
back to Israel, where he now lives
(although Mercier stayed in Paris
after fi lming ended).
Yoav’s interactions with other Israelis
in Paris show the other extreme.
He occasionally hangs out
with Yaron, a security guard who
brags about introducing himself
by saying, “I’m Israeli! I’m Jewish!”
While this might be a defense
against anti-Semitism, it comes
across as obnoxious when he goes
up to strangers at a bar and does
it. On the other hand, Yaron is visibly
Middle Eastern to a greater
degree than Yoav, with darker hair
and skin. Yoav’s European looks
allow him the possibility of eventually
passing as a Frenchman — if
that is indeed what he wants.
Mercier had never acted in a fi lm
before. He shows few inhibitions.
He’s unafraid to show off his body,
appearing nude in three scenes.
The camera often comes uncomfortably
close to him; in the fi rst
scene, it practically touches him
THEATER
Sight Unseen
Gripping tale of vision loss, medical miracles, dashed dreams
BY DAVID KENNERLEY
Brian Friel (“Dancing at
Lughnasa,” “Faith Healer,”
among many others)
has been hailed as one
of Ireland’s greatest master storytellers,
an “Irish Chekhov.” And
if you need proof, head on over to
Theatre Row where the Keen Company
is staging a superb, elegantly
restrained revival of his “Molly
Sweeney.”
Under the razor-sharp direction
of Jonathan Silverstein, the eloquent
memory play is reduced to its
purest elements. The spare scenic
design, by Steven Kemp, features
a verdant fl ower patch set against
an expansive azure sky, made all
the more expressive by Anshuman
Bhatia’s lighting.
“Molly Sweeney” showcases
what the Irish do best: storytelling.
And this bittersweet tale, about a
woman who lost nearly all her sight
as an infant and undergoes risky
surgery to restore it, is told in the
form of intertwined monologues by
a cast of three.
As 41-year-old Molly tells it,
she has long since adapted to her
blindness, relying on other senses
of touch, taste, sound, and smell to
create a world that she navigates
confi dently, even happily. But her
new husband Frank, a starryeyed
philosopher of sorts, is bent
on fi nding a cure for her condition.
He introduces Molly to Mr. Rice,
a once-admired ophthalmologist
seeking to refurbish his reputation,
and she is soon subjected to
dicey surgeries and an exhausting
battery of tests.
The question isn’t so much
whether the treatment will restore
her sight, but rather if Molly can
➤ SYNONYMS, continued on p.35
cope with the results, which could
deliver a seismic jolt to her equilibrium.
The neurological and existential
dangers are real.
When the play transferred from
Dublin to Off-Broadway in 1996,
Friel was worried that fi dgety New
Yorkers would not sit still for a
nearly two-and-one-half-hour play
with no action that relied on soliloquies.
Not only do the characters
have no interactions, they are not
even aware of each other’s presence
onstage.
➤ MOLLY SWEENEY, continued on p.35
October 24 - November 6 34 , 2019 | GayCityNews.com
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