french twist
LOVE AND REAL LIFE COLLIDE IN NEW COMIC DRAMA THE ATTACHÉ...
BOY MEETS GALLIC
“It’s a story about a couple,” says writer/director/star Eli Ben-David (2017’s The Cousin) of his new show, The Attaché. “This is a story about a wrinkle in a couple’s life in the romantic capital of the world, Paris.” The 10-episode series sees Ben-David play Avshalom, an Israeli-Jewish musician of Moroccan descent who arrives in the French capital when his wife Annabelle (Héloïse Godet) gets a job as attaché to the Israeli embassy. Unable to speak French, he’s immediately isolated – a feeling Ben-David knew only too well after spending five years in Paris. “I am embarrassed to say,” he chuckles, “but I don’t think my French got any better...”
TROUBLED TIMES
Ben-David first arrived in Paris with his wife and children in 2015, just a few weeks before the 13 November terror attacks on the city that included the shocking events at the Bataclan venue, where 90 people were killed. The fallout from the attacks spurred Ben-David to write The Attaché.
The show kicks off with the tragic events in the background, before bringing into focus a shocking encounter between Avshalom and the police. Ben-David wanted to show the immigrant experience in modern-day Europe and the emotions it conjures.
“It’s about fear,” he suggests. “It’s about losing yourself in some way, inside the family, outside [your native] country.”
CLOWNING ABOUT
As serious as The Attaché is, Ben-David leavens it with plenty of humour, especially in the frequent miscommunications his character endures due to his terrible French. There’s also a great deal of physical comedy, as Ben-David playfully flaunts his slapstick talents, even wrestling with a particularly ill-behaved Christmas tree.
“When you don’t know the language, you become kind of a clown,” he says. “Like Roberto Benigni. You become like a fish out of water.” French star Héloïse Godet, who learnt Hebrew phonetically to play Annabelle, feels the show is the perfect expression of reality. “In life, there’s drama and comedy,” she says. “There’s both of it.”
CREDIT WHERE IT’S DUE
While David undertook triple duty on the show, he encouraged collaboration from his co-star: Godet receives a credit for additional writing on The Attaché. “Eli was pushing me to get involved in my character and he was stealing from my life!” she laughs. “He was like, ‘OK, you’re so much Annabelle, with what you’re experiencing now in your life, we can take from it!’” The actor also got involved in the editing process, which only added to Ben-David’s delight. “I was lucky because Héloïse was my gate to Paris and to the French language,” he says. “She was my partner all the way.”
(RE)MAKING IT BIG
Israeli drama has been super-hot for some time. “We are in this romantic period,” says Ben-David. “The world has discovered how we write.” Shows have already been remade in the States, including BeTipul becoming drama In Treatment and Prisoners Of War morphing into Homeland. So don’t be surprised if The Attaché goes the same way. “In Israel, we don’t have a lot of money in our industry,” Ben-David adds. “We are not writing scenes with helicopters and stuff, because we know we don’t have money for that. We focus on dialogue and characters.” James Mottram
THE ATTACHÉ IS AVAILABLE ON STARZPLAY FROM 14 MARCH.