Ali Baylay

The first love between  two adolescents is so powerful and pure. It’s the kind of love without reason, for they’re blind and innocent, virgin to the true intricacies of living a life. It is pure romance. The kind of love which the name of a partner, ‘Vivian’,’ Michael’, evokes magic and charm. With time, partners grow from adolescence to mature adults, and love is stricken by outside forces, then limitations and reasons set into their hearts and this time, not even the Shakespearean dictum of “Friend should bear his friend’s infirmities” holds water anymore. Sometimes.

One on One (Koni Concept/2007) fits a romance category that surpasses most productions coming from Nollywood assembly line. Writer, Chuks Obiora pours his poor heart into the story and hits the nail home in the last scene with the hitting of Vivian by a car and left to die. That’s how far love can take us to the limits of our lives.

One on One is a story of a boy chasing around a girl for his love sake, and girl plays hard to get for another love sake.  Boy is in luck with girl when he stands up to hoodlum as he tries to molest girl while girl’s  lover scampers away from scene. Boy’s face is bloodied by the hoodlum’s henchmen, but in the end wins girl’s love.   Their love quickly blooms but hampers when an uncompromising uncle decides to separate girl from boy by sending her away to a distant aunt. Girl goes into hiding but eventually caught in the company of boy. Boy is arrested, but Girl in one of her hysterical cries, threatens suicide and holds a kitchen-knife to her stomach, if her lover is not brought back to her. Boy  is left alone and love continues. That boy is Michael (Francis Duru), and the girl is Vivian(Ini Edo, 2006 nominee for Best Actress).

Michael graduates and gets hired by a bank and the bank owner’s daughter, Sylvia (Omotola Jalade Ekeinde) wants Michael. She takes Michael shopping, get him sleep over in her bed,  invites him to parties, even as Michael looks out of place in the crowd, and promises poor Michael heaven on earth. Under such materialistic spell, Michael’s heart is almost  stolen. However, when Sylvia proposes to Michael a vacation for two in the UK, Michael senses something amiss, and rebels and abruptly leaves scene and runs to his Vivian.  Sylvia, relentless, summons Vivian to her private gym and offers the poor girl a payoff for leaving Michael with her. When Vivian refuses and hurries from scene, she’s hit by a car right outside Sylvia’s house. If one had been engrossed in this movie up to this point, the soft heart will surely cry for Vivian. She endures so much pain for love’s sake.

To narrate One on One so haphazardly doesn’t reduce this story to one of the run of the mill Nollywood romantic flicks, and  will be pure tragic if  story like this gets lost in the Nollywood shuffle. This story has dept. It is a human story that centers around Michael, a young vibrant graduate, with an innocent look to his boyish demeanor, who finds himself standing at the precipice of his life. He however weathers it as his steadfast character does so in Immoral Act.

As to the characters of  his two lead women vying for his love,  screen giants in their own right,  Vivian has, “nothing to offer Michael but cry, cry, cry”, as Sylvia succintly  describes Vivian to Michael; and Vivian in a later scene retorts to Sylvia, “You’re such a big talker”. In considering the lead lady in One on One, Pretty Woman, I Will Die For You and Society Lady, she’s  a big talker alright, but also live big in real life. Remember, her wedding took place airborne aboard  DASH 7.

If  I were to write such a powerful romantic story, I would have rolled in the end credits right where Michael runs from Sylvia’s mansion and falls into the arms of  the weeping Vivian, then they stand up (personifying victory) arm in arm, and kiss an everlasting kiss.

By Ali Baylay

Aminata is a pastorial story of a tyrant Chief, Adikali Momo who can marry any woman or underage girl of his taste in his chiefdom. This time, he wants Kelfala (Mohamed Bobson Kamara), the village drunk’s daughter, Aminata (Aissatou Bah) to be his nineteenth wife. Being a poor husband, Kelfala is easy to consent to the marriage, but his wife, Aminata’s mother couldn’t because her brother was once murdered by the same chief for dating a girl the chief wanted. However, the chief must have his way if not, Kelfala and his wife would be banished from the village. That is what the poyo drinking courtiers make us believe.

Chief Adikali Momo (Muctar Cole/screenwriter) must always have his way, even if it takes to rape the poor girl, Aminata, which he does, while his guards beat Philip, her youthful lover to the point of losing his mind. Aminata runs from the houshold and during her odyssey to nowhere, she’s rescued by a loving family, in whose home she delivers Chief Adikali’s baby boy and, she’s later put in school and goes on to become a lawyer, and comes back to prosecute her raper, Chief Momo and put him away for all the injustices. There’s a grand resolution to this flick, as Philip, once considered dead or insane arrives in a jeep, grown and successful, upon the crowning ceremony of Aminata’s son, and both have a long kiss as the movie fades out.

Aminata is a straight forward story that has the characteristics of the nusery recitation, “The house that Jack Built”, one reads in elementary. The plots are many here, and are arranged by incident building on another incident. Any story that could not be summerized in one sentence has a plot defect, such as Aminata. Summarily one can claim Aminata to be the underdog versus the status quo, wherein the underdog becomes the topdog in the end.

The actors, Muctar Cole (Chief Adikali) and Mohamed Bobson Kamara (Kelfala) seem to be veteran actors for, their postures and deliveries aren’t forceful, and they both prove helpful in making other actors come alive. However, the younger Aminata and philip do not have the same screen nuances and ideosyncracies of the older ones which to a trained eye create unbelievable screen characters. One is easy to observe the unbelievable screen time from when Aminata dissppears from the village, and the chief’s guards looking for her to the scene where she vomits, indicating pregnancy.

One characteristic trait of Aminata is that  writers, producers, cinematographers, and actors produced a piece of art that uniquely fits Sierra Leone, because imitating productions of neighboring Nigeria and Ghana would have killed the essense of the final product. The dawning of the day like cocks crowing, in this little village in the opening sequence of Aminata, ironically marks the dawning of new age of cinema in this West African enclave once referred to as, Athens of West Africa. Soon, larger than life celebs in the likes of Genenvieve Nnaji, Kanayo .O. Kanayo, Rita Dominic, John Okafor (Mr. Ibu) etc shall be cropping up all over the place. Kudos, mister producer!

By Ali Baylay

The last time I was ridiculed, confused, and puzzled by a literary genre was when I read Wole Soyinka’s Interpreters. I read it twice with no success at understanding the novel, until an O’level class friend of mine recommended Fourah Bay College Edred Jones’ treatise, Interpreters Interpreted. Even at that, I can’t hardly have intelligent discourse on the Interpreters. In all my movie reviewing experience, Wicked Intentions baffles me the same way Interpreters does, though in the case of Wicked Intentions, the problem doesn’t come from literary ingenuity as with Soyinke’s Interpreters, a sage from the class of the likes of James Joyce, than from pure editorial oversight. Wicked Intentions is narrated mostly in flashback mode. I guess.

The movie starts with a playerlike character, Jim (Desmond Elliot), who brings girls after girls to his shag (breakheart mansion), his palour, the likes of a nouveau-riche, and creates steaming love scenes with them. He makes them believe he’s all they dream about in relationship, only to discard them the next day like a penny with a hole in it. Jim’s quest is to win over a love partner with just enough money and beauty as not to intimidate him. He runs into Charlene (Stephanie Okereke). She kisses men and leave them crying. Charlene has similar characteristics to that of Jim. Like two liars, their relationship thrives on deceptions, false promises, and hopes. I guess.

On the other hand, Charlene’s bed-ridden dad fakes heart attacks to snare her into marrying a Chubby fellow of her distaste. The chubby fellow tries couple of attempts to win over this miss-hard-to-get, but instead gets splashed in his face with a bucket full of water. Relentless though, he hired two guys who kill Jim on their wedding day even as Charlene escapes town before she says, “I do”. I guess.

Charlene explains the entire story to Kamsi  (Nadia Buari) from her POV,  by way of giving her reason why she Charlene couldn’t accept Chris (Smith Asante) in marriage even as he placards banner of love on the wall for her. A writer once said, “Stephanie has an infecteous smile, and get to talk to her, she’ll treat you like an old acquaintance”. Since her Nollywood debute in Compromise 2 in 1997, Stephanie has always brightened Nollywood screen in most of her movies. Wicked Intentions is one of those movies she performs her flawless acts. With no sweat, Steph could easily be a Hollywood material.

By Ali Baylay

The second major location in Area Mama (De-Kross Movies) introduces the viewer to an ill-clad wife, Adanne (Mercy Johnson), as she sits in a barren living room feeding her son with garri when her husband drunkenly staggers into the room and jumps on her in a fight. The abuse continues until Adanne bloodies the husband’s forehead before escaping with her son from the scene. At her aunt’s home, Celia, her globe-trotting drug courier cousin who doesn’t believe in “stupid marriages” and thinks “a woman’s life is not all about marriage,” volunteers to take Adanne to the city. In Lagos, she hands Adanne over to Mama Gee who manages a household of Ashawos (prostitutes). What Adanne is about to find out is that “In Lagos every dog eats shit” as Celia will later tell her.

A producer means business when he casts two top billing actresses, Eucharia Anunobi (UK) and Mercy Johnson, and crowns them up with Patience Ozukwor. I mean Mama Gee, the mother of Nollywood films. The trio can set any screen afire and they manage to pull off one poorly written screenplay in Area Mama.

An unguarded women’s liberation this story is, though. Adanne runs from an abusive marriage in exchange for running the streets of Lagos, even to the point of sleeping with men whose “concern for a prostitute is the action and not any emotional problem”; Celia (Eucharia Anunobi) condemns marriage but traffics drugs from one continent to another while she keeps a gigolo in her bed; and Mama Gee (Patience Ozukwor) runs a brothel and finances a younger man as she sits in loneliness and drinks her life away. One must assume there is something missing in the lives of these so-called liberated women.

Mercy Johnson, who made her screen debut in Kenneth Nnobue’s The Maid , recently interviewed for the AfricanMovieStar.com, denied sleeping with the top brass in Nollywood, but in Area Mama she learns fast at playing an excellent hooker. However, the poor screenplay couldn’t allow the Igbira babe to give a stellar performance.

Area Mama is a story with universal lessons: One can never run away from the truth as evidenced in the personal experience of Adanne. She escapes an abusive husband but ends up in brothel servicing an abusive patron. Second, money can’t bring happiness as Celia with all the fleet of cars and the mansion would come to find out that while she’s away slugging it out like a man and trafficking drugs between continents, the gigolo she leaves at home entertains prostitutes in her bed – monkey wok baboon eats. Lastly, the irony of Mama Gee stuffing her little cache with Naira made off of a stable of innocent girls, a table in front of her full of imported liquor, and drinking herself to death does not spell happiness. The first time Mama Gee appears in this movie, she’s alone and she ends up alone at the end of the story.

Area Mama isn’t a redemption song for the African woman nor is it an advise for the woman in abusive marriage. To an extent, it tells the viewer the level Adanne falls from grace by following the footpath of Mama Gee and Celia; that running a brothel, no matter how lucrative, can be a lonely one. And the fleet of cars and a mansion bought with drug money buys Celia fake friends.