Two worlds of Israeli
 
Israeli New York-based actress Mili Avital tackles bereavement, unresolved grief and cross-cultural tensions in her latest film. LEXI LANDSMAN reports.
WHEN acclaimed Israeli actress Mili Avital arrived at the first rehearsal of the Israeli film Noodle, her young six-year-old Chinese co-star looked at her and ran out the room. 
“It was so befuddling. He stared at me in shock and left the room, and I thought ‘oh my goodness, this isn’t going to work out he just hates me’,” Avital says from New York.
“He came back with a comb … He’d never seen anybody with curly hair,” she says and laughs.¬†”He was just going to fix it … Kids are so real, they relate to what they see right away. There’s no shame or apology.”¬†That first encounter with the young actor -— Baoqi Chen -— was much like a metaphor for the film, which echoes sentiments of that cultural exchange.
Noodle, which opens in Melbourne on June 18 and Sydney on July 2, is a comic-drama that follows the plight of twice-widowed El Al flight attendant Miri Kalderon (played by Avital). Her regulated existence is suddenly turned upside down by an abandoned Chinese boy (played by Chen) left in her care after his migrant-worker mother has been deported from Israel. 
“In a way, that moment between us is exactly what this movie is about: the absolute oddness of ‘the other’, and yet you learn pretty quickly that we’re all just the same,” Avital says.¬†The film is a meditation on displacement, cultural dislocation and finding ways to communicate in extenuating circumstances, as well as looking through the lens at illegal foreign workers in Israel.¬†”I think in a very subtle way … it’s really about the fact that we are all one … A little lost boy from China and a older woman from Israel … are actually in the same situation -— they are both lost.”
To play the role, Avital met the woman her character is based on. The woman was twice-widowed by the age of 26. Her first husband died in the Six-Day War in 1967, and her second husband died in the Yom Kippur War in 1973. It is that sense of loss and grief that underpins the film: Mili struggles to overcome the loss of both her husbands, while her sister Gili (Anat Waxman) is in the midst of a crisis in her marriage to Izzi (Alon Aboutboul). 
“Coming back to life from grief is something that Israelis relate to very much because grief is just part of their lives, which is why this character almost had a toughness about her. She’s blocked because that’s how Israelis survive,” Avital explains.¬†”There’s a reason they appear aggressive or sort of harsh -— it’s like almost an animal response to grief. You have to toughen up you don’t have a choice.”
Despite the strong undercurrents that shed light on Israeli life, the film is more about ordinary people slung into extraordinary circumstances.¬†The political events and wars that help build Mili’s character are only nuanced.¬†”It’s actually kind of unique for the Israeli film industry where there is actually no mention of the soldiers or wars,” Avital says.
The film has been a success in Israel, despite its small budget, and it has also marked a change for Avital who had to lose the glamorous fa√ßade that has defined many of her previous roles.¬†For her role in Noodle, she received the 2007 Israel’s Critics’ Circle Award for Best Actress, an Israeli Academy Award-nomination for best actress, and Israel’s Person of the Year nomination.¬†
Though Avital is unable to attend the Australian premiere of Noodle, she hopes to visit in February.¬†”I have this odd theory that Australians and Israelis are actually very much alike because they grew up in opposite conditions, like Australians have ‘no worries’ about anything -— they don’t have to worry about stepping out their door -— but they sort of come to the same conclusion: life is short -— let’s enjoy it.”
Working as a waitress and reading cafe specials to customers isn’t usually the way aspiring actors dream of being discovered. But for Avital, who was born in Jerusalem in 1972, that is exactly what happened.¬†A customer stopped her midway through reciting the daily specials. The patron turned out to be a Hollywood manager, who was so captivated by Avital she signed her on the spot. So what did Avital do that was so mesmorising?
“You know, the way I read specials, I tell you,” Avital jokes, her voice animated. “She just had a good eye … It was all her doing.”¬†It was 1993, Avital had just moved to New York to study acting, for what she thought would be a brief stint.¬†The agent sent Avital’s show reel directly to director Roland Emerick and two weeks later, he cast her as James Spader’s love interest in the 1994 sci-fi flick Stargate.¬†
“He saw my reel and cast me straight off that tape and to this day, I think ‘thank God’ … I was very, very lucky.”¬†But Avital’s first professional theatre appearance at the prestigious Thelma Yellin High School of the Arts in Givatayim, a year before she went to New York, proved her success was more to do with talent than luck.¬†
Her first big break came at 17, when a teacher recommended she play the young virgin Cecile in a stage production of Dangerous Liaisons at Tel Aviv’s Cameri Theatre, and within a year, she had an Israeli Oscar under her belt.¬†”I think it was definitely luck,” Avital admits. “There is always that element of you have to have the right role at the right time.”
That role threw her into the spotlight overnight.¬†”I worked so quickly in Israel, right after high school, the Israeli Academy Award and the press and everything it came so fast. In two years, all of a sudden my life completely changed.”¬†She moved to New York, yearning for anonymity, and studied at the Circle on the Square for two years.¬†
She faced the challenge of learning English practically from scratch. She recalls doing a Shakespeare monologue in English at the start of her course and reciting lines while holding a copy in Hebrew.¬†”There was a language barrier, which I used a lot in Noodle -—¬† that sense of impossibility. You open your mouth, you so want to¬† communicate and you just can’t. You just don’t have the words.”
Speaking to Avital, it’s hard to detect that her American-sounding accent isn’t authentic. She speaks quickly and with a seemingly flawless grasp of the English language.¬†”Once I started working here, which was also by a fluke … it was clear to me, that if I could get leading roles in Israel, why would I stay here to play secondary roles with a thick accent … so I took the challenge of trying to sound like a native American and … it opened up more opportunities.”
After Stargate, which marked her segue from Israeli actress to Hollywood star and saw her earn a Sci-fi Universe award for the role, many American film roles followed. Like Israeli actress Ayelet Zurer, star of Angels & Demons, Avital is one of the few Israeli actors who have gone from homebred success to a global stage. 
That stage has continued to widen, with Avital appearing in a number of American films, including Kissing a Fool, Animals, Polish Wedding and When Do We Eat?.¬†She played a Warsaw Ghetto partisan in Jon Avnet’s NBC miniseries Uprising. But the film that made an impression on her was Dead Man, where she played a fragile ex-prostitute who slept with Johnny Depp’s character and got him into trouble.
“Dead Man was a really special film for me. First I worked with Johnny Depp. Let’s face it, that’s already enough to make an impression on a young girl,” she says laughing.¬†”If something is written in a way that inspires your imagination, you could just work on it endlessly without feeling its weight because it’s just inspiring, and Noodle worked the same way … It doesn’t feel like work, it feels like you’re on a journey.”¬†
Apart from her film and TV roles, she co-hosted the special To Life! America Celebrates Israel’s 50th for Israel’s 50th anniversary with Michael Douglas and Kevin Costner.¬†She also went behind the lens in her directorial debut in 2004 with the short documentary I Think Myself I am All the Time Younger.¬†But despite the many films, TV series and accolades she’s achieved in her 37 years, Avital admits to being caught in a chasm between two worlds -— her Israeli career and what could have been, and the Hollywood path she chose to follow instead.
“In a way, I have two careers: I have a career in Hebrew in Israel, and a career in English here. On good days, I think, I’m doubled. On bad days, I think I’m halved.”¬†Avital is married to screenwriter Charles Randolph and has a two-year-old son. She lives in New York, but visits Israel often and recognises the indelible mark her birthplace has made on her identity.
“I think a birthplace is like the street you were born on. It’s one of those things no-one can ever take away from you.¬†”No matter where you go in the world, you will always know the street you grew up on: the trees, the smells and those things. That yearning for the past actually is something that will always be there.”¬†Noodle opens in Melbourne on June 18 at Cameo, Nova, Classic, Palace Como and Palace Brighton Bay cinemas and in Sydney on July 2 at Orpheum, Chauvel and Rosevile cinemas.
 
Photo: Israeli actress Mili Avital and young actor Baoqi Chen in Noodle.
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