pictorial

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.

My Story is a hybrid form of Fatal Attraction. Vickey, a married woman, introduces Stanley to her elegant pad like a lion lures a prey to his den. Once in the den she eventually succeeds in seducing him with a kiss (I nominate this kiss as Nollywood’s on screen kiss of the year) and Stanley’s innocence is deflowered. He has eaten of the apple and like Adam, before us, is left corrupted. His entire world revolves around this married woman.

Vickey’s shrewd manipulation of Stanley to kill the old hag of her husband makes Stanley an accessory to murder. Having killed her husband and now left with a young and restless boyfriend who can’t get enough of her loving, she becomes disdainful of him and decides to poison Stanley. Seeing the lead man from Beyonce on the floor, spilling blood and painfully dying, makes My Story Part 1 a pure Greek tragedy.

“It lies not in our power to love or to hate for the will in us is overruled by fate,” Christopher Marlowe says in one of his poems. This statement is appropriate for Stanley (Van Vicker, The President’s Daughter, American Boy) as we see him enthralled by the beauty of Vickey like a deer caught in the glare of headlights. The seduction of Stanley by Vickey (Omotola Jalade-Ekehinde) is too overpowering. In the opening scenes in Vickey’s bedroom, Stanley, is completely helpless in the face of the formidable beauty of Vickey. In Beyonce, he lusts, but in My Story, he personifies the fate of Adam. Stanley’s falling in love with Vickey and his ultimate death by poison is the work of fate.

“Whoever loved that loved not at first sight,” Marlowe says at length. The phallic desire in people for another person is uncontrollable, mysterious and inexplicable. It violates logic. Why Stanley should fall in love with a married woman is everybody’s wonder and to finish a murder she initiates exceeds my comprehension.

The moral of this well rounded Part 1 of My Story is that, first, there is no second guessing falling in love, for people always do so at first sight; and second, whatever comes out of a relationship is predestined. Well, the theme of My Story is universal based on the premise-freewill, fate, and predestination. My Story is a human story Nollywood should be telling more on the screen.

Ali Baylay/Publisher.