Written by Haim and Nadav Lapid
Directed by Nadav Lapid
Starring Tom Mercier, Quentin Dolmaire and Louise Chevillotte
Running time: 2 hours and 3 minutes

by Ryan Smillie

When I started learning French in earnest in middle school, a textbook warned to watch out for faux amis (false friends), words that look like English words but have different meanings. Un raisin is a grape, not a raisin. Attendre doesn’t mean “to attend,” rather “to wait.” And our class was told many times not to use excité to say we were excited (it wasn’t until later that we learned it most often means “aroused”).

In a sense, Nadav Lapid’s Synonyms is filled with faux amis. Inspired by Lapid’s own flight from Israel to France, the film follows Yoav (Tom Mercier, in an electrifying debut performance) as he arrives in Paris