Nadav Lapid's Synonyms was about his inner conflicts with the very idea of nationalism...

| Oct 26, 2023

Nadiv's film forgoes an overarching narrative structure, which - depending on your patience with such things - is either exhilarating or exasperating. I found it to be the former, in no small part because newcomer Tom Mercier is absolutely riveting.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Feb 25, 2021

It's all very deep. Except, you know, not really.

| Original Score: C | Jan 3, 2020

As stiff-neck storytelling goes, this is pretty damn impressive.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 22, 2019

What makes "Synonyms" so compelling is how it explores the theme of identity through a lens of searing self-reflection.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Nov 19, 2019

The movie... is antic, poetic, funny, and alarming in equal measure - a real ride, although where the ride is taking both its hero and the audience is always in question.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Nov 8, 2019

[Synonyms] is relentless, brutal, disorienting...

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Nov 3, 2019

...at once an ambivalent love letter to Paris and a startling act of cinematic aggression. The camera moves are brusque.

| Nov 2, 2019

A fascinating and ever-changing film... It is so unpredictable.

| Nov 1, 2019

[A] searing, maddening, explosively brainy movie about the mutability and immutability of the self that, appropriately enough, never stops changing shape.

| Nov 1, 2019

This portrait of an ex-pat is also a critique that suggests a citizenship weaned on perpetual life-during-wartime alert might be slightly traumatized.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 1, 2019

For all the artful obliqueness of Lapid's approach, the autobiographical background of the story lends it a lived-in honesty; the incidents and interactions of Synonyms feel both symbolic and true.

| Oct 28, 2019

One word for Nadav Lapid's Synonyms, a movie with a hero obsessed with words, is "astonishing."

| Oct 25, 2019

The movie is, for all its accomplishments, sketchy, tentative.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Oct 25, 2019

Mercier, who appears in nearly every scene, is a consistently galvanic presence.

| Oct 25, 2019

Small details... create a compelling portrait of modern immigration.

| Oct 24, 2019

Furious, brilliant, exhausting...

| Oct 24, 2019

Filmmaker and subject also share a disdain for restraint, shouting and jostling to ensure we've gotten their point. But while their parallel passions aren't exactly subtle, they do make their mark.

| Oct 24, 2019

But whereas the films it quotes sought to create cryptic and contrapuntal meanings, Lapid errs on the side of the loudly obvious, building to a final shot that might as well be a thesis statement for the rest of the film.

| Original Score: B- | Oct 22, 2019

Lapid delivers a deeply personal rant in the form of a wild and reckless drama...

| Oct 21, 2019