Presents, Ini Edo (Afi), Tonto Dikeh (Elizera), Enebeli Elebuwa (Chief Henry), Emeka Okoro (Cally), Daniel K. Daniel (Friday). Tchidi Chikere, Director; Ikenna Anumba, Producer; Onoh Chigozie, Director Of Photography.
The role played by Ini Edo in this movie is one of the most terrible actors play in films. Samuel L. Jackson, had to go into rehab for drug and alcohol abuse after his role in Spike Lee’s Jungle Fever (1991) because he was drunk and high on drugs all the time during the shooting. Shelly Duvall suffered mental illness and delusions after shooting The Shinning (1980); Janet Leigh couldn’t take a shower with the curtain drawn after shooting Psycho (1960); It took years for Isabella Adjani in and out of therapy after she played the lead role in Possession (1947). She vowed never to play such roles ever again.
Roles about mental illness and themes dealing with human dignity place so much weight on the actors because they strive to nail the parts so bad that they go through intense, physical, and mental emotions to make it through. For example, Isabella Adjani, on the set of Possession, cried almost twelve hours every day, just like our character Afi, on the set of Ini Edo-The Crazy Girl. The roles can be excruciating, painful and unbearable. One can’t fake such parts. It has to be real, believable and convincing. Some actors sacrifice their bodies, and their sanities to give the films compelling and memorable performances.
About seventy-five percent of Ini Edo’s screen presence in this film is intense, excruciating, and haunting. She has schizophrenia; she has manic depression; She’s bipolar. In a street vernacular, she’s warm and fuzzy. Today she’s sunny in the morning, by evening, she’s untouchable. Of course, she’s a regular girl of every man’s wish to take home: beautiful and sexy. The only daughter of the wealthy honorable member of parliament, Chief Henery (Enebeli Elebuwa).
On her birthday about town, she and her father, Chief Henry, see Elizera (Tonto Dikeh) selling arts by the roadside, and they stop to look and maybe buy one or two. There was none that appeals to them, but Elizera directs them to the nearby studio where the artist (Friday) is busy doing some paintings. Upon seeing Friday, Afi kisses him smack in his mouth in the presence of her father and Elizera. That’s the introduction of her unwellness. In the next scene, she comes back to Friday’s studio in a see-through nightgown, for him to draw her portrait in the nude.
Chief Henry begs Friday to pay attention to his daughter as she has shown so much attention to him, which Friday refuses. Friday, however, has a problem. He owes a motel owner about four-point-five million nairas in room bills, and they keep harassing him for it. Afi, let the motel owner have his way with her so that he can write off Friday’s loan. Just when she has done so and comes to Friday’s studio with the good news, she ‘s surprised to see Friday and Elizera mouth locked up in a kiss. She goes ballistic. Goes home feverishly crying, and reports to her father of Friday raping her, and for which he and his girl, Elizera, as a conspirator, go to jail.
Afi’s mental condition is hereditary. Her mother, long past, had bipolar disease. One night, she cut her wrist and bled to death. Her death triggered Afi’s mental condition to come into a marked relief after her mother’s death. Chief Henry has over the past years tried to keep this secret of Afi’s mother’s death by suicide, from her, even as she can’t get tired of asking how her mother passed. Afi’s condition deteriorates when she lies about a rape and Friday, whose presence brings her peace, goes to jail. Chief Henry makes the condition worse for both him and Afi when he institutionalizes her and takes from her, her fundamental freedom. Even the craze are jealous of their God-given liberties.
Afi feels guilty of lying about the only person, she can “Find peace in his presence.” She wants to go to the news media to publish her retraction of the statement against Friday and doesn’t mind the legal repercussions. The father refuses and puts her in a private asylum. That’s when Afi’s mental sickness triggers to the level of menace to society. She kills the guard, breaks out of the shelter and stabs the motel owner to death, and marches to the publishing company and kills the publisher too. Afi is off the hook, as she goes back to Friday’s studio to confesses to her labor of love for him but Friday freaks out and retreats from her. Knowing that she has lost the fight in winning over Friday, Afi runs from there to nowhere, only to be hit by a car and dies in the arms of Friday. Poor girl, her tortured soul may rest in peace now.
If this film is about Afi and her manic depression, and therefore a serious and a tough part to play by Ini Edo, it is equally so for the father, Chief Henry-Enebeli Elebuwa. No one parent on earth wants to see his or her child in such a tortured condition, especially the only child as Afi. Chief Henry’s predicament and shame show on his face when he and his driver meet Afi having sex with a hoodlum on the bare floor of an unfinished building. On the one hand, he’s a parent, and on the other side, he’s a politician with lots of enemies out to get him ones they know the mental condition of his daughter. He has to maintain both him and his daughter’s dignity. We witness the scene where the chief’s in a more significant predicament and dilemma when Afi asks him for money, Friday owes the hotel manager:
Afi, to Chief Henry, Did you say stupid?
It is the highest degree of stupidity for me to give four-point-five million Naira…! Chief Henry bawled back.
Mommy never called me ‘stupid.’
Chief Henry, strenuously, I said the idea is stupid. I didn’t say you are stupid.
I’m stupid, cant you see it? I’m mad, I mean you just said it…I’m a stupid, crazy girl.
Chief Henry stands guilty and embarrassed for his utterances as she clatters away back into the mansion, and he hopelessly and haplessly laments:
When will this stop, when? When? When? Why me?
The title of Ini Edo-The Crazy Girl made light of the human condition of Afi in this film.This story is a human dignity theme, like One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest (1975). In the African sense, we condemn anybody with such condition as crazy and therefore dismiss them as so. Afi starts acting stupid and dangerous when they take her into custody, (Asylum) and the nurse confirms to her she has manic depression, the reason she’s institutionalized. She indeed repeats the statement to the nurse, “Mad.” After learning that she’s going to lose some of her freedom, for instance, telephone; the father couldn’t let the painter be free, whose presence brings her peace of mind, and they are going to watch her twenty-four seven, she rebelled. She finds a way of getting out of this seclusion (Asylum), and when she does, she turned diabolical to society and herself. Memorable tale.
NOTE: Africannoviestar.com regrets to learn of the death of Enebeli Elebuwa. He made lots of us laugh, we marveled his acting, and he warmed our hearts with his fatherly roles he played. We wish him to rest in eternal peace.