Yova lying naked in the bathtub was found by Elime and Caroline early in the morning. He was reawakened in bed, waiting for a journey of integration, or about to face a new life and "learn to be a man" again.
At the beginning of the film, the naked Yova looks like a newborn baby, naked, lying in a container. The bathtub is like a uterus, and the little warm water left is like residual amniotic fluid, supplying insignificant "nutrients". This huge baby seems to have experienced dystocia, and not only needs to be "rescue" to regain consciousness, but his birth is accompanied by painful memories.
Yova, like any other newborn, waits for the grown-ups to teach him the language, for the grown-ups to tell him who you are, where you are, what you are going to do, what you are going to do... where you are from and how you are going to live. However, Yova is both a baby and an adult here. From the beginning, he was bewildered.
His first outfit after that was an oddly fashionable yellow coat, throughout and in posters. But in the end, he took it off anyway.
In order to become a French Parisian, the Israeli "brainwashed" himself by memorizing dictionaries. He is reluctant to speak Hebrew, and even to communicate with his relatives, he has to avoid the camera and speak broken English. He has an unforgettable painful memory. Although this painful memory is regarded as boring, it is also regarded as valuable boring by Elime. Elime is willing to sketch Yova's story from life, and hopes that Yova will give her own story in return.
So Yova started telling Elime her story, in French. If he can't speak clearly, he has to speak, and he has to describe the words.
I don't understand French, and I don't know if the pronunciation and grammar of Yova's actors in the film are idiomatic. Whether you are also a language beginner in terms of perception.
When I was studying linguistics, I was asked a question:
Does language determine thinking, or does thinking determine language?
Yova wants to change her thinking and integrate into the city of Paris and the country of France through the study of French. He impassively sang the national anthem, expressing his faith in national loyalty. He goes dancing, hangs out with French girls, eats strictly prescribed pasta(?), he wants to be French... but he also hangs Van Gogh self-portrait(?) postcards on the wall.
He could get French status by marrying Caroline, but he felt sick.
His good Israeli friend died, seemingly for taking part in a march against neo-Nazis.
The classmates who took French classes with him seemed to be only doing language learning and singing the national anthem as part of the prescribed procedure, not to become French. This original intention is very different from Yova.
Yova asked the same questions as her French teacher, but received a more French response—music—incomprehensible music.
He can't be a Frenchman, and his original identity is still being consumed.
He was asked to please himself, and shouted in his native language, making some syllables and tones.
So Yova shouted the Hebrew name of the genitals, exciting but also heart-wrenching.
The artist didn't care about his French, only his nakedness, and the foreign language, voice, words, expressions... I couldn't understand it, but it was exciting and had a different kind of pleasure.
Yova shouts unpleasant words in her native language, while being asked to "please" herself. It's also a language, why should one's native language be viewed erotically?
When he saw that a Lebanese girl who had lived longer in France was still hostile to him, he fled, in costume.
He went back to his own story, his original story.
Although I can't keep the story myself, I don't want to see it also consumed and used to please others.
This France cannot accept itself, and its own active integration is also regarded as the object of curiosity.
He knocked on the door angrily and roared.
But the door didn't open.
There is a way to memorize words - consecutive words with the same meaning, like Yova does in the movie.
But after all, there are subtle differences between words. When you memorize the last word, can you still say it is a synonym for the first word?
Yova wanted to leave, but couldn't;
I want to catch it, but I can't.
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