Taking the lead

Playing the lead in The Front Line, a new film about Congolese immigrants to Dublin, was a challenge for Eriq Ebouaney. The Parisian actor of Cameroonian descent was more than willing to rise to it, he tells Donald Clarke

Much has been written about the effects the new immigrant communities - African, Chinese, Polish - have had and will continue to have on Irish society. Worthies have considered ways the newly arrived and the indigenous citizens might enrich each other's lives. Immigrants themselves have written about their plight. More than a few oiks, speaking from saloon bars and, occasionally, the more fulminatory Sunday newspapers, have predicted doom for the nation.

Eriq Ebouaney, a distinguished Parisian actor of Cameroonian descent, offers an original perspective. Eriq, whose greying hair and rich voice grant him a statesmanlike gravitas, stars in a new film telling a story set among Congolese immigrants to Dublin. The Front Line, a thriller directed by David Gleeson, progenitor of the successful 2003 drama Cowboys & Angels, follows a troubled asylum seeker, working as a security guard at a bank, as he is blackmailed into participating in a robbery.

Ebouaney spent five weeks shooting the film in and about Dublin and must have gathered some insights on the distinctions between the established immigrant communities in France and those newer ones in Dublin.

"I spent the first few weeks talking to Africans here and they helped me greatly," he says. "You look at the African communities in France and they have been there a long time. But here in Ireland I think the Africans feel more different." They feel more foreign than their French counterparts? "Yes, very much so. They feel alone and lost. And the isolation is that much greater because they are often survivors of wars. They have come here to set up a new life and it is maybe harder to do that here than in France or England."

Yet the recent disturbances in Paris have suggested that race relations there are as bad as anywhere in Europe. Has that tension been talked up by the media? "Yes, I think it has," he says. "We were shooting when that was all going on and we were convinced that all Paris was burning. But it really was just a few people. That was overblown, I think."

Sadly, and not entirely without reason, we often find ourselves assuming that any African we meet here will, at some point, have been made to feel unwelcome. But Ebouaney, for the most part, speaks warmly about his time in Ireland. He claims to have met relatively little open hostility.

"No. Not so much. People here are warm and curious about you," he says. "They are very open. But, from my point of view, the difficulty is they live indoors. In houses. In pubs. African people live outdoors, even in Paris. It is difficult when you enter a pub." He mimes pushing open a door and peering cautiously into an imagined dark space. "I would go in and I would find myself the only black man in the place. But people did start talking to me. They were really friendly. They just need time to get used to these new faces."

Ebouaney, now in his late thirties, did not originally intend to get into acting. After taking a degree in business, he set up a company exporting computers, but, as he tells it, rapidly became desperately, stunningly bored. A friend suggested he move into this business called show and, profiting from a formidable presence and palpable charm, he has remained in work ever since. His big break came when he was cast in the lead role in a biopic of Patrice Lumumba, the onetime prime minister of the Congo. By coincidence, David Gleeson and his producer (and wife) Nathalie Lichtenthaeler independently caught a glimpse of the poster for Lumumba and were equally taken by Ebouaney's charisma.

"We always chase a star at first," Gleeson says. "And then we hope to fit the rest of the cast around him or her. Obviously we thought of Denzel Washington first for this, but quickly realised he would never even get to read our script. Chiwetel Ejiofor and Djimon Hounsou both passed and then we both saw Eriq and were blown away by his charisma. We were waiting on a few other actors, but, to be honest, we became so set on Eriq we were hoping they'd say no."

Unsurprisingly, given Ebouaney's admired performance in Lumumba, Gleeson and Lichtenthaeler assumed the actor's roots were in the Congo. There are, one imagines, considerable differences between the accents and mannerisms of Congolese nationals and those of the Cameroonian peoples. To add to the ethnic stew, Ebouanay's co-star Fatou N'Diaye is of Senegalese descent. Is this like asking Germans and Italians to play Swedes? "Well, neither of us speak Swahili," Ebouaney says. "Which the Congolese would speak. That was something we had to work quite hard at. There are two very different ways of speaking. In Cameroon we tend to speak very fast, but with a heavy African accent. But that was one of the great challenges. Another, of course, was acting with people with Irish accents. That took some getting used to."

This December, we will see Ebouaney playing Balthasar, the African Magus, in Catherine Hardwicke's intriguing production of The Nativity. The film, which has inevitably been dubbed a prequel to The Passion of The Christ, is purported to be attempting to re-inject historical accuracy into the Christmas story. Certainly the notion of that tale being told by the director of Thirteen, the searing record of a teenager's descent into near-lunatic delinquency, sets the mind wandering to some interesting places.

"Well, Catherine Hardwicke is from an independent background and she wanted to show that Mary was a very young girl. She wanted to get across all the pressure she was under after being told she was to give birth to the son of God. She also wanted to show that Joseph was just a young boy as well. We are going to see how much Mary was resented by those around her."

It is, obviously, nice to secure an interesting part in such a major release. But Ebouaney does ruefully admit that it is still difficult for black actors to get roles in films where their negritude is not an aspect of the story. The situation is, nonetheless, better in America than it is in France.

"Yes, you will see Denzel getting the role as the lawyer or the detective now," he says. "But I think those roles exist because years ago they had the blaxploitation films and then more black directors and writers coming along. You need black film-makers for that to change. They have not come along in such numbers in France."

Well, Eriq seems like an intelligent bloke. Maybe, he should set about making his own films.

"Who knows. Maybe I can. And then in 10 years we will be all right. We have dedicated actors. We can make it happen."

The Front Line is reviewed in this week's Ticket - see Film Reviews