It’s a fleeting plan. Just a few seconds from the first episode of the series The rope. A perfectly smooth lemon pie is sprinkled with zest. The image is of little use except to indicate that the main character in the scene is a pastry chef. Many actors to whom the role would have been entrusted would not have cared about the realism of their gesture, especially since we will not see him a single time in the kitchen afterwards. But Tom Mercier did not want, he said, “falling easy”. “He came to see me and offered to take pastry lessons, he felt the need to be credible”, remembers Dominique Rocher, director of the mini-series in three episodes for Arte.
It is the adaptation of a novel by the German Stefan aus dem Siepen, which follows the daily life of a base of scientists and its staff, upset by the appearance in the nearby forest of an endless rope. “I don’t know how to cook anything but an omelette, smiles the 29-year-old Israeli actor, as if he really wanted to end this baking thing, and I would never have dared to go on set without having learned how to make this lemon pie. I would have had the impression of betraying everyone, of not being in the truth. »
The Hebrew accent mixed with a particular phrasing
The first time Tom Mercier appeared on screen, in 2019, there seemed to be no artifice, and he displayed no effort. It was in Synonyms, by Israeli filmmaker Nadav Lapid. He played the main role, that of Yoav, a young man, a former soldier, who arrived in France to flee Israel, his native country which he considered “wicked, abominable, odious, lamentable, repulsive, detestable, stupid, narrow-minded, base-minded, base-hearted” – in one of the litanies of synonyms that his character uses to learn French.
The film won the Golden Bear at the Berlinale and was a real critical success. And sparked debate, Nadav Lapid evoking as much the weight of the army in Israel as anti-Semitism in France: a scene where a character sings theHatikvah, the anthem of the Hebrew State, a few centimeters from passengers of the Paris metro struck the spirits.
For the filming of Synonyms, Tom Mercier settled in Paris, from which he never left. The Israeli passport, moving to France… He could be seen as Yoav, his character in the film. But he stands out. He clarifies that he did not serve in the army – on a daily basis Ha’aretz, he explained that he was unable to join the IDF because of a health problem. He adds that he is as French as he is Israeli, that his family comes from the south-west of France, evokes a grandfather who was a soldier during the First World War.
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