Venus Films Production Presents, Majid Michel (David), Jackie Appiah (Chantel), Artus Frank ( Rick.) Kalsum Sinare (Akosua). Screenplay (Phil Efe Bernard; Story, Producer, Abdul Sallam Mumuni; Director, Frank Rajah Arase. Director of Photography, Adam Umar. (C2009)
How come Majid Michel knows so much how to play psychopathic roles in films? Indeed one needs to write an essay on African cinema entitled, ‘Majid the Psychopath.’ He plays his characters with so much abandon; you think it is his daily life.
I have seen him as an artist photographer in Guilty Pleasures with Ramsey Nouah. Then in Victims, where his former boss Dr. Ceril (Ed Nnasor) qualifies my belief when he calls him, “psychopathic narcotic skunk.” And here in Who Loves Me? As an artist painter, with his bearded face and all, he walks straight into the shoes of renaissance painters like Al Greco, Alonso Sanchez, and Picasso of Spain. Like all of the above, Majid Michel portrays himself as an evanescent flower that wafts its fragrance in the world of eternal beauty. I’m not writing anything here that befits his tombstone but, Majid represents the bulk of artists out there in the world who stand on a cleft of sanity, looking deep into the raven of insanity. All artists are crazy folks and crazy like hell, Majid in Who Loves Me is no exception.
Who Loves Me? Itself is a beautiful story of a labor of love with no payoff in the end. Before I raise your hopes up, I must frankly tell you this is not a happy ending type of story. In short, you must prepare to shed some tears for the three major players or naturally shed tears with them, for there going to be a lot-lot-lot-tears here. Chantel (Jackie Appiah), is a young corporate magnate with a weak heart; David, (Majid Michel), is portrait artist who at first sight falls insanely in love with Chantel; Akosua (Kalsuim Sinare) is David’s mother who can do anything to please her son even if it’s death.
On a power lunch with another executive about town, Chantel crosses the view of David, who falls instantly and insanely in love with her and draws a thousand copies of her portraits and placards them all over the city and he shares his dinner with the picture of Chantel. You should see him jump off his bed when his mother stands between him and Chantel’s portrait We know the raving anger of him when his mother wakes him up while he’s having a wet dream with Chantel. I told you he is crazy! Eventually, Chantel and David meet in a patio of a nightspot, overlooking the city. In this club, is where they formally meet. David comes to learn from Chantel that she has a terminal heart problem and she’s going to die in seventy-two hours if she doesn’t have a heart replacement.
David learns that Chantel is at the hospital, and he intentionally stands in front of a moving car and gets hit. He gets hit by a car again in A Sting In A Tale. Remember? At the hospital, with a broken leg, as he lays in his mother’s arms, tells her how he’s ready to die than to live and see Chantel dead because she needs a heart replacement and he couldn’t help her get a donor. The love of mothers for their children, Akosua cuts her wrist to death so that she donates her heart to Chantel to live.
At the welcome back party for Chantel, when she has been given a new lease on life by David’s mother’s heart, a punk boyfriend of her’s long gone from her life, arrives in town. In the middle of dedicating the good life and blessing of her’s to David, the old flame enters the room, and she breaks from his arm and goes to the long-lost love, Rick.
I applaud the Director of Photography, Adam Umar and film Director, Frank Raja Arase for the marvelous technical fit they employed in this movie. The simple fact that their shots measure the type of story they’re telling: The extreme close-ups of David as he draws the portrait of Chantel in the restaurant brings so many cinematic elements out of those shots. And what with the rapid angle shots of David at the top landing of the stairs looking down at the blood-splattered floor, as his mother lays dead at the base landing, and the shooting of the yell, the face, the agony in that scene reminds me of the shower scene in Psycho II.
Who Loves Me is an unfinished symphony, with the staccato still ringing in my ear while I sit waiting for the part 3. For instance, the most memorable scene is where David helps wipe his mother’s tears. When she too learns that the friend who has helped her once to pay for her drugs from a pharmacy, and who now happens to be her son’s crush, has only seventy-two hours to live. However, I find that there are surprises that do not sit well with me in this story. In a film or well-written screenplay, there’re elements of foreshadowing coming events in the plot that would keep the audience expectant. In a letter Akosua left at the doctor’s table that she wrote to her son to explain why she takes her life, not even her son knew she too had a terminal illness, nor was foreshadowed in the story. I applaud her for the grand gesture at first for giving her heart to a younger woman to use while she’s gone. Why weren’t relapses of her illness to inform us about her imperil danger?
Secondly, the issue of the long gone boyfriend has never been mentioned anywhere in the story or his return foreshadowed in the story. Introducing a significant character in future in the story, and knowing his influence on the structure of the play, the audience has right to know that David’s mother will be disappointed in her grave and that even David is going to be disappointed in the end. By injecting Rick ( Artus Frank) from abroad after David and Chantel have spent seventy-five percent screen presence together in the story seemed so cooked up and manufactured that he is placed there, either to clear a writer’s block or just to have a simple resolution. That’s a convoluted plot scheme.
Thirdly, the manufacturing of a twin sister way at the end of the story which comes to town after her sister passes away to me is a convoluted plot to keep the story going. Chantel forsakes David for the childhood boyfriend, Rick. David is heartbroken and goes into solitude. Chantel is depressed over her decision to leave David, and she goes into a heart failure and dies. I believe the story would have ended here. Bringing the twin sister who has never been foreshadowed in the story to take over the family business, and to propose love to David which he flatly refuses, and to try her luck with Rick, doesn’t have a dramatic essence. The story ended when the center figure, Chantel died. And I end here with my review too, damn it.
To answer the theme question of Who Loves Me, David does and not the jerk, Rick.