Golden Effect presents, Nse Ikpe Etim (Mary Oyennekwe), Wale Ojo (Akin Cole), Joke Silva (Mrs. Cole), Chief Chika Okpala (Mary’s father), Ada Ameh (Cynthia), Lydia Forson (Ginna), Chick Chukwu (Hussana), Hafiz Oyetoro (Alex Ojo), Alexis (Sophia Chioma Onyekwo), Charles Bullion (Alpha), Jay jay Coker (Omega). Director/Producer, Kunle Afolayan; Story/Screenplay, Kemi Adesoye; Director of Photography, Yinka Edwards/Alfred Chai. © 2012
It is your first day of school, and you are hurrying up to locate your class, you have a handful of books in your arm, not looking at the crowded hallway of students, and your attention is on the doors, and oops! You run smirk into a girl and her books, and yours are all scattered on the floor. In a hurry, you and the girl go about gathering the books off the floor. In the process, your butt heads. Upon reaching your class, the biology teacher asks the class to open the textbooks to page twelve for the first assignment. You had mistakenly given your biology textbook over to the girl in the hallway, and you barge out of class, go about looking for her. Eventually, you meet her at the cafeteria during lunch break. You get your biology textbook and she offers you a seat. “My name is Jessy,” you say. “Tammy,” she says. There’s no better way to get acquainted with a new girl. In no time, the whole school shall be referring to her as Jessy’s Girl.
Accidental acquaintances can be funny but can be lasting, cause there’s always the history of, where and how it all started. Mary (Nse Ikpe Etim), is a woman with a humble beginning, living in a tenement yard in some part of Lagos, but wake up late for work. Her father wants her home in the village this weekend to sit on a case between her sister Cynthia (Ada Ameh) and her husband. Since the Owerri village is far-flung out there, her boss, Alexis (Sophia Chioma Onyekwo), volunteers the ticket for her to fly there and be back to work on Monday. Mary has never flown in a plane before and she’s in a nervous wreck.
Akin Cole (Wale Ojo), makes some last-minute decision to join a company retreat in Abuja, where he’s supposed to make a presentation, and orders that his secretary Alex Ojo (Hafiz Oyetoro) books him a flight there. But the venue for the retreat in Abuja is not made clear to Akin. A company’s decision not to disclose to him. By the way, Akin portrays an insolent, haughty, conceited, and arrogant man. He’s the type George Eliot addresses in his quotation: “He was like a cock who thought the sun had risen just to hear him crow.” For instance, Akin has written a proposal to present at the retreat to get rid of dead weights in the company. The reason why the entire staff hates him.
Mary is from a humble background and having to accidentally swap phones and destinations with Akin, a well-bred and blue-blood Abuja high society born. The lower class and the high class are accidentally put together. Their relationship could sure be enthralling. Akin and his mother, Mrs. Cole (Joke Silva) are not too good in a relationship, for they quarrel with every word that comes from either of them. From hundreds of miles and on the phone, you can hear Mrs. Cole reprimand her son for pouting his mouth at her. However, she still wants to be introduced to her son’s girlfriend, some news, about a girlfriend as told her by his secretary Alex. Akin didn’t want her to know, and for which he queries Alex. His concern with Mary is to represent him at the retreat. And Mary’s concern is to represent her in the case between Cynthia and her husband. Unwittingly, they trade places.
Mary and Mrs. Cole get to a beautiful start like they’ve been knowing each other forever. They both put their guards down, at least Mrs. Cole, for Mary was being respectful to her as to one’s mother. We can hear Mrs. Cole repeatedly correcting Mary, “Call me Mommy, not Mom,” In such a lovely tone from a mother badly in need of a daughter-in-law. She even throws a party, likely in honor of Mary with a pretext of having the girls over for a soiree, and at the soiree, she proudly presents her to the crowd as a new-found coveted jewel. Mary’s presence in her company gets her closer to Akin. In return, she spoils Mary in earnest. They drink wine together from the same glass, sleep together on a mat, under the tropical moonlight night, serves her coffee in the morning, and both play and laugh a healthy laugh and fall over each other, like schoolgirls.
Akin cools down Cynthia and she unites with her husband. With all his insolence and arrogance, his unintended future father-in-law with the help of Cynthia breaks his wing. He sleeps on the floor in a mosquito-infested night and Chief Chika Okpala wakes him up early in the morning, with the blade of a machete for him to join them in manual labor in his cornfield. And he humbly follows them to the farm. Both Mary and Akin are undergoing a vetting process for a future marriage. Seemingly. He gets jumped on by Mary’s ex-boyfriend, and Mary too is jumped on by Akin’s ex, Ginna (Lydia Forson). Just as Akin’s mother is pleased with Mary, so Mary’s father is pleased with Akin. You can see the show of love for Akin on the morning of his departure when the family gathered, children and all to wish him goodbye and to go in peace.
The meeting and Phone Swap are released in the same year 2012, but the holy grail in The Meeting (2012) was laid bare in Tunde Babilola’s screenplay. Makinde (Femi Jacobs) is to get the contract signed by the Minister of Land, which he gets it signed on a Friday afternoon in his jeep on the way to the presidential palace. He’s able to catch a plane back to Lagos and attend his daughter’s graduation. In Phone Swap, Kemi Adesoye and Kunle sunk the motives of both Mary, making a trip to Owerri, and Akin attending the retreat in Abuja into the background of this wonderful drama. The screenplay didn’t do justice to Mrs. Cole and her son’s relationship. She never gets to see her son in person even as she acquires so much percentage in the company for which he works. In a moment of truth in the story…
Mary, in a surprised tone, “You are the Chairman… (bewildered) I still don’t understand. Does Akin know you are the Chairman?”
Mrs. Cole, “No, It’s a new development. It hasn’t even been officially announced yet…I just recently acquired the necessary shares…”
Mary, “To get his attention?”
Mrs. Cole, “True. (swallows hard) Akin doesn’t want to have anything to do with me. I used to drink a lot before. Much more than I do now. It ruined my life.”
Mary, “The truth is the minute Akin finds out, you are the chairman, he’ll resign. Why don’t you call him and tell him?”
In the next scene, Akin sits in the living room of Mary’s father’s house, nursing his face, and the phone rings, expecting Mary’s voice on the other side of the line.
Mrs. Cole, “Akin its Mom, please don’t hang up.”
Akin, aggravated, “What is it? What is it?”
Mrs. Cole, (beat) I know I drove your father away. I broke up the family. I was a different person back then, not now. Please forgive me.”
Akin, after hearing his mother confessing and dearly begging, almost chokes on holding back on tears. I’d rather witnessed a reunion scene with his mother. Will that be at his wedding with Mary? At a certain point in the story, we become less concerned about Cynthia and her husband in the village, and the result of the retreat in Abuja, at which we would have had the opportunity to see mother and son in the same room.