Double Eclipse Production Presents, Desmond Eliott (Lee), Ini Edo (Barbie), Mercy Johnson (Vera), Moses Efret (Bob), Orlandi Symmon (Judas), Abdulraheem Abdulla (Viper). Story/Screenplay, Willie Ajenge; Director of Photography, Waheed Adeogun; Producer, Andy Nnawuihe, Executive Producers, Willie Ajenge/ Andy Nnawuihe; Director, Willie Ajenge. C2006.
“Bob and Barbie were arrested by the police as they were passing the balance of the blackmail money to Judas and Vera who were both also arrested. They were all sentenced to thirty years each for the attempted murder of Barbie’s husband,” goes the epilogue of After the Wedding.
“No, I never loved you Walter — not you or anybody else. I’m rotten to the heart. I used you, just as you said. That’s all you ever meant to me. Until a minute ago, when I couldn’t fire that second shot.” That is the introduction to the legendary Roger Ebert’s review of the 1944 movie, Double Indemnity, as Phillis Dietrichson (Barbara Stanwyck) addresses Fred MacMurray (Walter Neff) before their demise. Walter is an insurance salesman hired by Phillis to put life insurance on her husband for the sum of $50,000. The plot complicates when Walter romantically involves in a love affair with his client, and later planned and committed the murder of the husband so both can claim the money.
When we meet Barbie (Ini Edo) and Lee (Desmond Elliot) in the room at the beginning of the film, or shortly after the wedding, they are both excited over a newly found check made to Barbie by her late mother, to be claimed only upon her marriage. She hands over the money to Lee to add to the company finances, in which Lee has a partner who happens to be a childhood friend, Bob (Moses Efret). Lee doesn’t have sexual feelings toward Barbie, so he starts outside affair with Vera (Mercy Johnson), and for who he rents, buys a car, and has steaming sex with and who he later arranges with, to kill Barbie in a hit and run.
Halfway through the commision of the crime, Lee gives up. He couldn’t carry out such a heinous crime. He’s a weakling. Barbie, on the other hand, brave as hell, hires Vera to kill Lee for money she promises to pay her upon the completion of the job. The job is botched, and Lee kills the assailant, and there’s an investigation into the murder and fingers point to Barbie. Vera and her boyfriend, Judas (Orlandi Symmon) blackmail Barbie and demand more money than the original price on Lee’s head. Barbie and Bob don’t want to accept this and plan to kill Vera and Judas, but on a pretense trip to pay the blackmail sum, all are caught in the act and sent to jail.
I’m tempted to draw a parallel between the two stories, After the Wedding and Double indemnity. The plots are different, but the themes are the same: ‘False romance’ and ‘Greed.’ Both films are based on the false premise about a romance where in fact there was none. Phillis didn’t like Walter, and neither did Barbie for Lee nor Bob. The motive in the first film is about the $50,000 insurance indemnity payment to have been claimed by Phillis. In After the Wedding, the motivation is blurring because Barbie has all the money she needs and even financed the business. But to have asked Vera to kill her husband and to be paid for it, was to only get him out of the way because she is bored with his poor sex life.
The problem with After the Wedding is that the plot isn’t linear. There’s the plot with the business itself which is only mostly referred to; the establishment of the relationship between Lee and Vera; the secret romance between Bob and Barbie. The Lee and Vera relationship plot end when Lee pulls out of the plot to kill his wife and after which there’s no more mention of vera by Lee. The business relationship plot is more or less placed in the story to establish a common link between the characters, but besides that, it has no more essence here. The plotline relating to the relationship between Bob and Barbie comes late in the story that I suspect, the writer is finding a way to get out of plot quagmire.
After the Wedding is an attempt by Nollywood at film noir, it went as far but didn’t reach the finish line. As written, we cannot follow and pit for a protagonist (good guy) and an antagonist (bad guy). We suck our teeth at Lee for plotting earlier on to kill his wife because she can’t give him sexual satisfaction and Vera could. And when he realizes the folly of it all, he reneges. His wife Barbie is half successful only as the accidental death of her husband is botched when Lee bludgeons his killer with pressing-iron. The story would have had a film noir nature to it with the coldness of the characters in pursuing their motives. This story is suitable with the voice (internal monologue) of possibly Lee, or from the POV of the Detective assigned to the case which must have handled such cases, when he keeps saying, “There’s no perfect marriage.”
If we emphasize the plotline between Vera and Lee, in the story and therefore let it stand out to the end, it would have come close to the line of Double Indemnity or the Michael Douglas’ Fatal Attraction (1987). Their relationship would have become sour beyond repair, especially so when Lee reneges killing his wife, and Vera would have taken upon herself to carry the crime by herself, and Lee would have jumped ship, to his wife’s camp and would have been Vera versus Lee protecting his wife from vicious Vera. That’s what I assumed when he came back home after missing to hit Barbie in the traffic, and she enters the living room, and he holds her and kisses her. But the plot ends there. No more fall out on either Lee’s side nor Vera.
Barbie’s role in this flick is to portray her as the femme fatale. Her motive for killing or attempting to kill her husband isn’t outstanding in the story, and even to the point of hiring Vera. And that got me twisted about the story, and in fact, got me formed a whole different take on the story. How could Barbie work into Vera’s rented apartment, disclose to her, her escapade with Lee, offers her two million Naira to kill Lee. Bob immediately comes to mind. If Bob engineered the love relationship between Lee and Vera and just to let Lee out of the way so he’ll be left alone with Barbie, it would be all good. But don’t we have the right to have seen the snippets of the romantic relationship between Bob and Barbie? Don’t tie me to the making-out of the two lovers in the room, when Lee was listening, like that of Bob and Barbie. The writer plants Barbie ‘s sister there.
After the Wedding turns out to be a male lead miscast. The story would have sizzled with characters in the person of Majid Michel, who could rub his high-handed roughness to the act; Sylvester Madu’s cold-bloodedness could have even been better when he pulls one of his stunts as he does so in Bank Business and The Black Ninja That Stops Corruption. What of Jim Ike, in Games Men Play, Greedy Lover and The Shepard, and Van Viker in The Amendment. I mean the entire crop of Nollywood and Ghallywood bad boys. Prince Osei for one. But Desmond Eliott has a face and physic of an altar boy; he doesn’t fit in.