Nadav Lapid takes another jump forward with his fine new Israeli/French film, SYNONYMS

Not that this exceptionally creative, challenging and deeply unsettling filmmaker has that much farther to go. From Nadav Lapid's bizarre and gripping Policeman (2011) through The Kindergarten Teacher (2014) and its unnecessary but certainly acceptable remake (from 2018, which Lapid did not direct) to his newest stunner, SYNONYMS, in which, as ever, his antagonist cannot fully live or maybe even survive while dealing with the horrendous contradictions of life in the hugely divided, corrupt and corrupting state of Israel today.

Mr. Lapid, shown at right, is not only pointing his finger at Israel; France, the country to which our "hero" has come for escape, takes its licks, as well. And any thinking person here in our deeply divided USA watching this film will also, TrustMovies suspects, wince in some kind of guilty, angry recognition.

The hero/antihero this time around is Yoav, a young, unhappy Israeli who seems to be suffering from everything from home-country dysfunction to a case of OCD and, though he understands and can speak some French, is counting on his lightweight French/ Hebrew dictionary to get him through each day.

Yoav is played by an in-every-way impressive newcomer named Tom Mercier (above and below), who gives the kind of performance that is so real, so moment-to-moment strange and compelling that you are not likely to forget it. You're not likely to forget Mercier either, for his face and body -- which we see all of and fairly often (there's ample full-frontal and full-rear nudity) -- are of the sort of that legends are made. Not to objectify here (goodness, no!), but M. Mercier has perhaps the best-looking male posterior in movies, and his frontal view is quite something, too (he often seem to be semi-erect).

So, how does a young man, without the equivalent of a French "green card," make his way in Paris? On the kindness of strangers, of course, via a wealthy young Frenchman out to do good while fulfilling his own needs, and his older-but-still-pretty girlfriend, both of whom help and use Yoav. The young man Emile, played by Quentin Dolmaire (below, left), that gorgeous kid from My Golden Days, proves visually stunning once again, while Louise Chevillotte (at right, two photos below) does subtle intuitive work in her role as Charlotte, the used-and-using girlfriend.

Yoav's job -- with a security company that provides this for Israelis in France -- leads us to some marvelous, if strange people and work, all of which is shown in often fast, frenetic scenes that make their point only later, when we've pieced together events and the unsettlingly mixed feelings they've engendered.

There's an extended scene on the Paris subway involving Yoav and his new, hugely troubled friend, that is as suspenseful and anxiety-provoking as any you'll have seen. Lapid's film is also allusion-riddled -- to security and what it means, in France and elsewhere; to the miasma of the military; to Jewish and/or Muslim identity; and especially to the allusiveness of words and their meaning.

Synonyms is also about as homoerotic a movie as I've encountered in a long while, though Lapid never pushes it over the boundary to homosexual. This is an interesting tightrope walk, and the filmmaker -- who both directed and co-wrote the screenplay with his father Haim Lapid -- manages it all with enormous elan. Women are noticeably secondary here -- to be used and enjoyed, of course -- but it's mostly about the power struggles/friendships between the guys.

Visually, Synonyms is Lapid's most impressive work to date (the cinematographer is the filmmaker's usual, Shai Goldman): alternately ravishingly beautiful in its flow and pace, sometimes simply quiet and cold. Once in awhile it goes overboard (in my estimation) but mostly it is almost wildly on-the-mark in the manner in which it keeps us as off-balance as is our hero.

Performances down the line are not simply solid but complete -- especially in the case of Mercier, who will have you thoroughly rooting for Yoav, even though you come to realize that he is lost. Yet perhaps not completely. Is there hope? Lapid may close the door., but I don't think he locks it.

See for yourself, as Synonyms -- from Kino Lorber, in French and Hebrew with English subtitles, and running 123 minutes -- opens theatrically in New York City tomorrow, Friday, October 25, at Film at Lincoln Center and the Quad Cinema; in Los Angeles on November 1 at the Landmark NuArt; and here in South Florida on November 15 at Miami's Coral Gables Art Cinema, and on November 29 at the Lake Worth Playhouse and the Living Room Theaters in Boca Raton. To view all currently scheduled playdates, cities and theaters around the country, click here & scroll down.

What a gal: BARBARA RUBIN AND THE EXPLODING NEW YORK UNDERGROUND explores a special time, place and culture

Barbara Rubin. That's a name TrustMovies hadn't even heard of prior to viewing Chuck Smith's charming and disarming new documentary about this young woman, who, at age 16, thanks to circumstances, smart choices and a little luck, found herself working with Jonas Mekas to help to organize and become a kind of moving force in the experimental film culture that rose to prominence in the 1960s.

It was not only experimental film that Ms Rubin fostered and even created; she brought together titans of poetry, performance art, music and more. Bob Dylan, Andy Warhol and Lou Reed owe an awful lot to this energetic and talented gal.

BARBARA RUBIN AND THE EXPLODING NY UNDERGROUND explores the early life (and early problems, as well) of the titular young woman briefly and succinctly, letting us see from almost the beginning what an unusual person she was. People who knew her describe her as a "mystic," and before you pooh-pooh this word (as I usually do), you may find (as did I) by the end of this fairly short documentary that you, too, are ready to apply the term to this unusual woman.

Filmmaker Smith (shown above) may not have given us the "all" of Ms Rubin, such a surprising and event-filled life did she lead, but what we see and hear should be enough to make us more than aware of what a singular force she was in the 1960s and, to maybe a lesser extent in the 70s.

How Rubin (shown above and below with Andy Warhol) was mentored by Mekas but soon went out on her own at age 18 to create an experimental film -- Christmas on Earth (originally to have been titled Cocks, Cunts and Christmas on Earth) -- that was both sexually explicit and genuinely experimental and that evidently still remains powerful enough to shock audiences. (The tidbits shown here certainly entice, but I would love to see the entire film.)

Her very close relationship with gay poet Allen Ginsberg (she wanted to bear his children) was pivotal to her life, and yet how (which we see and hear about here) and why (which we never quite understand) she suddenly embraced Orthodox Jewish religion and culture seems genuinely amazing, adding luster to that "mystical" theory. One friend opines that Rubin simply overlaid her love of Buddhism onto Orthodox Judaism. (The doc's Jewish orphanage moment should make a believer out of you, I suspect.)

Whatever Rubin did, she seems to have done it fully and with no qualms nor half measures. From her oddball letter to Walt Disney to her becoming perhaps the first woman to explore and open the Kabbalah to women, Rubin broke that mold for what a woman could do, just as she had done in the experimental film world -- which was a male-only place for the most part (as was the film world in general).

How her life ended (at age 35) seems both shocking and unnecessary. But then, there is so little known about the details of her time as a very fertile wife  -- take that, Mr. Ginsberg! -- in an Orthodox Jewish community in the south of France, who is to say her contribution here was any more or less important than that to the world of experimental film?

The various talking heads we hear from include film critics Amy Taubin and J Hoberman, the late Mr. Mekas himself, and most trenchant and insightful of all, author and assistant professor Ara Osterweil, clearly too young to have known Rubin but definitely deeply affected by the woman & her work.

From Juno Films and running just 78 minutes, after opening a couple of weeks previous at the IFC Center in New York City, the documentary screens at at the Roxy, San Francisco, on Wednesday, June 12, and hits the Los Angeles area on Friday, June 14, at Laemmle's Music Hall and then expands to Laemmle's Royal, Playhouse 7, Town Center 5, and Claremont 5 on June 17. Click here to find any further playdates, cities and theaters that may have been recently added.

AMERICAN RADICAL: The Trials of Norman Finkelstein; Ridgen/Rossier's doc debuts

If, like TrustMovies, you couldn't get enough of the Norman Finkelstein seen in Defamation, the recent inquiry into anti-semitism by Yoav Shamir, you'll want to pop over to Anthology Film Archives to view a new documentary entitled AMERICAN RADICAL: THE TRIALS OF NORMAN FINKELSTEIN to learn more about this pained and painful, intelligent and feeling, tireless and tiring proselytizer of the uses of The Holocaust, Israel's abuse of the Palestinians, and what it means to be Jewish.

I love this guy, pictured above. I love how he argues, keeping to the point at hand and not letting an opponent (as we observe in the film) sneak in a reference to the late, lamented reporter Daniel Pearl in order to cloud up the argument with sentiment and anti-Semitism. I love how he's managed to handle his own intense history as the son of Holocaust survivors (a father who never talked and a mother who wouldn't shut up) for whom that event set in stone the rest of their lives. I love how he tries very hard to explain this and then waves us (and the filmmakers) away when he's suddenly overcome with emotion. I love how he has dedicated his life to what he perceives as the truth.  But I don't love that this has cost him one job after another, culminating in the loss of deserved tenure and consequently his job at De Paul University.

Award-winning filmmakers  -- David Ridgen (above, left) and Nicolas Rossier (above, right) -- have brought together the man, his words and his deeds, into one 84-minute film that captures his aggressiveness as well as his warmth, and should leave you with greater understanding and respect for this difficult (even one of his best friends worries that he's self-destructive) fellow.

Beginning with a prime joke that I had not heard (and that of course will be taken as anti-Semetic), the filmmakers see to it that we're off and running.  We get the history of the man (Norman's mom took the lesson's of The Holocaust in a "different direction," notes one interviewee); hear from Finkelstein's fans (Noam Chomsky) as well as his detractors (Alan Dershowitz, shown above, right); and then see the man during a lecture tour of Canada (below).

Especially prominent is a scene in which a young woman begins to cry because she feels Finkelstein demeans Jews and the Holocaust.  "Those are crocodile tears," he tells her without a trace of sympathy.  "I don't like playing the Holocaust card, but now I must. All my relatives on both sides of my family were killed and both my parents were in concentration camps and in the Warsaw Ghetto.  I will not have their suffering used to excuse Israel's attack on Palestinians.  If you had any heart, you would be shedding those tears for the Palestinians."

Notes Dershowitz: "The man's only Jewish on his parents' side."  Does Finkelstein (shown above during one of his early cam-
paigns) go beyond being merely criticial of Israel?  "OK," he says at one point, "let's assume that my being anti-Semitic is true?  How does this affect the truth of what I am saying?  If Albert Einstein had deep identity problems, does this mean his theories were not true?"  At the Univiersity of Western Ontario, he is warned about possible violence from an unruly crowd but speaks to them anyway.  And they listen. "Why don't you bring up Palestinian terrorists?" he is asked by one audience member.  "Why you don't bring up Israel's President?" he responds, "He is the biggest terrorist of them all."

Against his own book The Holocaust Industry, another is published called The Finkelstein Industry, in which he is accused of profiting from the Holocaust.  "Losing my job is profiting?" he asks. On a tangent for a moment, he speaks of the song "I Will Survive," and what it meant to his mother (that's the point at which he waves us and the camera away).  Then comes the De Paul scandal, and finally a trip to the mideast (above) that he is warned against making. Suddenly banned from visiting Israel for several years, he instead goes to surrounding areas where he meets, greets and speaks.  To hear, at the close of the film, young Palestinians talking about their experience with the man and what they've gained, is somewhat heartening.  "I learned that we don't have to use terrorism, but we can use diplomacy," one fellow says.  (Let's hope that the latter will eventually work.)  Then he adds, "And I learned that not all Jews are the same."  Hey, it's a start.

American Radical: The Trials of Norman Finkelstein plays at AFA from Thursday, February 11, through Wednesday, February 17, daily at 7 and 9pm, with an additional 5pm screenings Saturday and Sunday. (Click here for more information.)  If you live outside New York, click here for information on additional screenings around the country.