Royal Arts Academy presents, Monalisa Chinda (Elsie), Uche Jumbo (Aret), Alex Ekubo (Chigo), Danielle Chioma Okeke (Joke), Touitou Lugo (Lawrence), Joy Nice (Peaches) Bobby Michaels (Emmanuel), Diana Yekeni (Chantelle), Shawn Faqua (Vincent). Story/Screenplay, Emem Isong; Production Manager, Emeka Duru; Director of Photography, Austin Nwaolie; Executive Producer, Emem Isong; Directors, Desmond Eliott/Tom Robson. © 2013.
I saw Monalisa Chinda, the bright-eyed Nollywood actress who acted as the high-stepper, miss-hard-to get in Kiss and Tell but ended in Joseph Benjamin’s arm anyway. Uche Jumbo. She partnered with Benjamin in Kiss and Tell (2011) and helped him lay Monalisa. I saw Danielle Chioma Okeke. I ain’t got much on that broad. Even her acting but I know she’s got 36-24-36. Lots of buns on it. A great figure for any man’s desire. With such a team, I foresaw a laff riot. Their names combined with directorial wizardry of Desmond Elliot, coupled with the screenwriter, Emem Isong, I already started to crack. Didn’t I see them rocking it out in Kiss and Tell? That was hilarious.
Hollywood released its first cougar movie about an older woman, Annie Bancroft (Mrs. Robinson) who seduces a young college graduate, Ben (Dustin Huffman) in The Graduate (1967). The movie deflowered young American movie-going conscience about sex. Since then, there had been, Father of the Bride (1950), Boy Toy (2011), Cougars Inc. (2011). Cougars Inc. is about a young man who has been expelled from most colleges but still wants to continue, uses cougars to help pay his tuition and cares. Cougar stories can be interesting.
Oxford’s definition of a cougar is an older woman preying on younger men for sex and can trap them by guile. What with their fading beauties which no man their age wants to mess with? They’ll snare young men with money and other motherly favors or cares their mothers never gave them. For instance, pamper them with money to go spend on girls in the night clubs. Here’s a typical scene between Aret (Uche Jumbo) and Chigo (Alex Ekubo). He wants to go out on the town even when Aret wants him to stay home:
Chigo, “Am I a toyboy?”
Aret, “What are you, my husband?”
“Am not your toyboy and I resent being treated as one.”
“You’re right. I shouldn’t. I apologize, honey, the way I spend money on you, you supposed to be at my beck and call.”
Aret takes back the wad of nairas on the table and wags it in Chigo’s face. Chigo is of a sudden, begging to get the money back from Aret.
Chigo (hugging Aret), “Baby relax.”
Chigo (Alex Ekubo) and Aret aren’t good since they come back to Lagos. Chigo had taken $5000 from a cute and younger Afro-American girl, Chantelle (Diana Yekini), to get to the states, and she finds out, Chigo has an older woman in his corner. She isn’t taking it. She follows Chigo to Lagos for her money. If you ever heard in Nigerian street parlance, Akata, this girl turns out to be the real Katakata. She won’t let go of Chigo until she gets her $5000 back. And she isn’t playing.
I have seen Alex Ekubo in Cheaters Club when he is cheating on his wife with another woman, in a hotel room while been recorded by his own phone he mistakenly left on. The rich wife throws him out on the street. He’s always in a pickle with women lovers. That time he blew it up. Here, he’s standing on a hot tin roof. He can’t ward off Chantelle, who has come to live with him in his house, in Lagos, until she gets her $5000, and in the process, Aret showers him with a bucket full of cold water. Loser! Aret and Chigo are serious comic relief in the story.
In the Yoruba heartland of Lagos, three cougars are returning from Houston, Texas where they had a ball but bring home a piece of baggage that takes about ninety minutes of screen time to unpack. I foresee Joke among the trio would be the only adult in the room when she bragged: “There’s absolutely no way I can date a guy younger than I am. I like them old and I like them sensible.” I guess she had no choice when Emmanuel the older guy, the “sensible” boyfriend is caught in the night club with a younger girl while lying he’s in Abuja on a business trip.
In this cougar world, I find the relationship between Elisa and Lawrence interesting. And I think I must use the relationship as my main analysis of this Lagos Cougars. Lawrence (Lugo Touitou) had met Elisa in a bar in Houston, they got to talking, and in the end, had a fling that night. Now that she gave the young man the nunu that night she left him craving for more, but disappear from him thereafter. It is Lawrence’s lucky day when he runs into her at a party in Lagos, Nigeria. Small world. He is invited to this party by his best friend Vincent (Shawn Faqua), who turns out to be Elisa’s son. Elisa doesn’t know how to handle the situation.
Let me digress here: Something about sons and mothers. My nineteen years old boy now in the army had always slept between me and his mother, because he doesn’t want to see me touch on her. He’ll never go to sleep unless he heard me snore. And even in the middle of the night, he’ll wake up as soon as he felt me shake. He’ll be stock between us, little shining eyes, looking my way, naughtily socking on his fingers. The little brat! That is how jealous sons are of their mothers.
Elsie isn’t comfortable with this relationship since Lawrence turns up here. And he happens to be her son’s best friend. This isn’t Vegas or Houston where what happens there stays there. Her son is a breath away. It will be an utter disgrace if Vincent finds out she’s dating her best friend, and in fact not long after he catches them kissing in public, in a night club.
Vincent stands in his mother’s face and asks her:
“What are you doing with Lawrence, mom? I am ashamed, is an understatement. I’m disgusted and humiliated.”
“Now you listen to me. I worked my finger to the bones, to provide the best for you when your father abandoned me for his younger secretary.”
“So that gives you a reason to date my friend, a boy old enough to be your son?”
“I will date anyone as I please and there’s nothing anyone can do to stop me.”
“Well, I will stop you. Mom, have you no shame, hugging and kissing my friend, how do you expect me to face the world? People discover that my mother…?”
Elisa slaps her son Vincent. Her son has put some sense into her, the bitter truth.
After that scene, Elsie doesn’t want to be the cougar that we know. But the hardest thing for Lawrence was to let his friend’s mother go even after the brawl with him. He sneaks into her room and everything ends there.
Elsie, “I can’t.”
Lawrence, “What do you mean, you can’t?”
“I can’t. Not anymore…this whole drama isn’t working.”
“You can’t do that to us.”
“This is not meant to be.”
“Elsie, I ain’t kidding with you. There’s no way I can survive without you.”
Elsie is now theatrical, “Look, look around you. This is love, not war. Yet we have more casualties than I’ve ever known in my life…Love costs you, your friend, me, my son…should this crumble our world?
Lawrence, “Time will make it alright.”
“Time will not make it alright. For starters, you’re not supposed to be in my bedroom.” That scene ends the relationship.
Elsie had not been a fulltime certified and ordained cougar. All along she had been skeptical as she seemingly questions her relationship with Lawrence. Once Vincent found out his mother was fooling around with his friend, Elsie sees herself foolish, especially when at one time, in company with Aret, and Joke, referring to Aret and Chigo, comments, “That boy is young enough to be your son.”
Lagos Cougars’ storyline is trite. Not quite the usual as we experience with films on our side of the Atlantic. Emem Isong directs his storyline within the bounds of the African context. He didn’t go all the way. And a matter of fact, the monologue of Joke at the acceptance summarizes and encapsulates the moral of the story. There’s always cause and effect in the way we behave. People become cougars because of disappointments they face in marital lives. We see how Joke is disappointed by Emmanuel. And during her speech, we find the greatest fear of Aret, Elisa and herself, all accomplished women, is compounded in one word-husband. Tatiana in Single at 40: “…and until you find that man, your lives will be incomplete.” That is the same message Joke has for Aret and Elisa in Lagos Cougars:
“…me making money, owning my own home, being the best in my field, and above all getting this, am supposed to be the happiest woman on earth, but I realize that none of that count. Love, oh love, love complete us all…I’m happy for everything that I have and have achieved, but I want something I don’t have. I’ve realized that without that all of this is meaningless…Jite, I stand in front of you and the world to tell you that I love you…you can make the biggest fool of me on youtube, or you can come here right now and kiss me and show me that you love me.”
Beautiful production.