For Better or For Worse

By Ali Baylay

To put it bluntly, this is a movie that attempts at the inner state of mind of the center character, Sandra (Genevivie Nnaji), but we never get acquainted with her motivation for the kind of rebel without cause behavior of Sandra.

Nwafor Anayo’s For Better or For Worse (2003), starts with Sandra  entering her father’s  living-room-turned-dance-hall, full of partying guests, and with her nose in the air, she weeds unfavorable members from the guests and ask them out. And even as she takes the floor, no one dares join her, until she beckons them to the floor. Here, we are introduced to Sandra as an insolent, cigarette-smoking rich girl who attends a parochial school, in a rundown neighborhood, where she’s hailed as a queen.

She’s heedless to the warnings and threats of both her father and a step-mother she dares not set eyes upon. There’s not a single attribute for the wanton behavior Sandra carries on in this movie, only for the fact that her mother is past, how long, story doesn’t tell,  but raised by her father and his second wife.

Sandra goes from one self-destructive behavior to another. She steals money and other belongings from her father, buys drugs and throws elaborate hotel pool-party, and in a drunken stupor, she hits a child  with her car almost to death. At this point, Sandra seems possessed by a demon, but is rescued from damnation by Michael (Emeka Ike), a boy friend with a humble background. For the sake of Michael’s love, her high wire destructive behavior simmers a little as she accepts constrains placed on her by him, and that takes a hundred and eighty degrees turn in her character.

Sandra and Michael enjoy a short period of relative peace of love until the uncompromising father of her offers Michael an ultimatum that askews the relationship:  Become pilot trainee in the father’s airline company and have a career in exchange for Sandra. Michael accepts career as a pilot  reluctantly, and Sandra is turned down by Michael even as she dogs him all over town.

Michael goes on to become a pilot and Sandra goes abroad to the US for studies. However, a big chunk of Sandra’s love remains in Michael’s heart as he keeps her picture with him  in the cockpit of the plane. Sandra comes back to town from the US with a fiancee, Jonnathan (Clem Ohameze), a four-one-nine don, and happens to run into Michael at a restaurant. There’s a brawl between the two fellas-Michael and Jonathan.

After series of attempts to take Sandra back from the American boy, even to the point that he loses his job with the airline, and crashes his car in a self-suicidal mission, he relents. Sandra and her parents find Jonnathan is fake and tricks him on his last mission to pilfer one hundred thousand dollars from Sandra’s father, by paying him off in counterfeit dollars, as long as he leaves Sandra and never comes back. Sandra goes knocking at Michael’s door for forgiveness, and when Michael couldn’t, she decides to go back to the states to finish her schooling.

For Better or For Worse isn’t about for better  for worse,  because, there isn’t a scene where marital vow is exchanged to validate  title of this movie. It is neither a lesson for overprotective parents, nor lesson for wanton children nor a blueprint for Romeo and Juliet,  but a share 226 minutes of past time .

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