Trino Motion Pictures Production presents Zainab Balogun (Sylvia), Chris Attoh (Richard Okezie), Gbemisola Okezie (Ini Dima Okojie), Udoka Oyeke (Obara), Ijeoma Grace Agu (Hawa Bello), Bolji Ogunmola (Nurse Karen), Precious Shederack Ihemeje (Teenage Sylvia) Director of Photography, Kagho Crowther Idhebor; Executive Producer, Babatunwa Aderinokun; Co-Executive Producer, Uche Okcha; Writer, Venessa Kanu; Producer, Ekene Som Mekwunyo; Director, Daniel Oriahi. © 2018
Wait a minute, have we not seen Chris Attoh, by then a hundred and sixty pounders, and much younger, working for an advertising company as a copywriter? Yes, I’ve got it. That was in Six Hours To Christmas? He played Reggie against Pebbles (Damilola Agibite). And here, he’s playing the role of Don Draper, the fictional character in Mad Men, that works for the Manhattan advertising firm, Sterling Cooper, who can conjure up from thin air, beautifully made-in-heaven ads. He made lots of money for Sterling Cooper. Richard, (Chris Attoh) is the Don Draper of No Box advertising company. They take a toast for him winning them a large account from Zepheryl Corp, and he goes home, gloating about it to his friend, Obara (Udoka Oyeka), and fall in love with Gbemisola Okezie (Ini Dima Okojie).
Whereas Don Draper is a genius at coining phrases and forming up a saleable sentence for his copies, Richard is not natural as everybody around him in the office so believes. Here’s the scandal: Richard has a spirit friend, Sylvia (Zainab Balogun) since, his cradle. Sylvia can magically do anything for Richard as long as he promises to love her, marry her, and live with her in the spirit world forever. As always, she visits Richard in his dreams. She has helped him from grade school, to university, and to the present job in solving his critical problems all in his dream:
When We Are Asleep In This World/We Are Awake In Another-SD
At critical times when Richard’s advertising career is at stake, Sylvia quickly appears in his sleep. She gives him instructions as to what he can do to make it a salable presentation. For instance, Sylvia helps as Richard had no idea how to present a pleasing ad copy to the customer from Zepheryl, and there was a time constrain to it. Even as Richard had wronged her in the last dream for refusing to take her flowers, he has to go back-in his dream-looking for her and begged her: Sylvia, with tears in her eyes, “Change the color of Zephyr presentation from blue to red. Let a woman do the voiceovers and replace the word “grandeur” with “ luxury.”
Richard, in this film as Reggie, has one pitfall. He falls quickly for women when he is excited. Can you all remember when he got caught in excitement with Pebbles, during the yuletide office party and messed his Christmas evening up for his fiancé? In Sylvia, he got excited and fell in love with Gbemisola, while he has an enigmatic spirit, Sylvia, for a lover who wants him to have a healthy out worldly life with him.
Richard, “It is not real.”
Sylvia, “How can you say that, Richard? Look at me in the eye Richard and tell me it isn’t real.”
Richard, “What did you expect, that I’m gonna just leave everything and come out here, start a family with you, be with you. What about my other life? Sylvia, it’s not gonna work. It has to stop.”
All his days, he has been spending the best of times with his spirit partner Sylvia in his sleep. They have cried on each other’s shoulders; him, snorty-nose and all; her, crying a river, and they have told stories to each other, laughed at funny things together. And Sylvia even made a potion for Richard’s mother when she was sick, though, she didn’t make it through. So, when Richard had come to fall seriously in love with Gbemi and thought of marrying her, that didn’t go well with Sylvia, the spirit. Sylvia wants Richard exclusively to herself and no one else. I hope she didn’t give the wrong potion to Richard’s mother, to get her out of Richard’s life, even as she said, “Believe it or not, Richard, I don’t know everything.”
Richard refuses to take the customary hibiscus flower she had always parted from him with, and that signals to her that he didn’t want the unreal and unworldly relationship with a spirit to continue. She got furious and angry, and Richard had walked away from her. The last time Richard visited her in his dream and requested help with his Zephyr project, from her, she had asked, “What if I was real, would you have married me instead?” “I don’t know, perhaps.” Richard had said.
It is no surprise when Richard’s friend Obara (Udoka Oyeke) introduces his fiancé, Cynthia/Sylvia, to him and Gbemi in a restaurant that leaves Richard in a trance. The color in the restaurant turned crimson hue at her entrance. Sylvia left the spirit world and come in the flesh-full of life, glowing, and sumptuous-to follow the “perhaps” statement Richard made to her in the dream. She has to do this to be closer to Richard, which turns out to be as tormenting as painful for Richard. He didn’t want to hurt Gbemi in any way, but the hovering presence of Sylvia got him to the brink of insanity. The mysterious appearances of withering bouquets of hibiscus in ancient Greek vases that look like from the other side of Hades, for which he can’t correctly have answers for when Gbemi could ask.
It all comes down to the night Gbemi brings Sylvia over for a stay. Already Richard is scared out of his skin. He tells his wife not to let Sylvia stay over in their house, which on the other hand, makes his wife suspicious that he has something for Cynthia/Sylvia. The Next day, at a presentation, Sylvia/Cynthia appears in the room, seeing only by Richard. Richard is under her spell as he gyrates at one time and performs kisses with an unseen person. Eventually, at the disappointment of everyone, he runs home and meets Sylvia with his wife, Gbemi. Richard walked passed them to the kitchen and got a knife to kill Sylvia once and for all. Instead, he stabs his pregnant wife in the stomach. When Obara comes upon the scene, Sylvia kills him too as Richard yells out to him, “She’s not Cynthia, she’s Sylvia!”
The relationship with Sylvia was a childish and wet dream affair for Richard and didn’t think it to continue. It is hard for the human Richard to do, though he keeps the matter to himself all his life. When he falls for the human, Gbemi (Ini Dima Okojie) Richard wants to live like a human and do social things, and have kids like everybody else. Sylvi’s love for Richard will never die. Even after the death of his wife, and she slits Obara’s throat, she sits by Richard with hibiscus to his face, imploring him to follow her to the spirit world.
I don’t think there’s a knife, razor-sharp enough for me to separate Salvador Dali’s two abstract arts, “Meditative Rose” and “Sleep” from Sylvia. I may try to dissect the film, using the paintings, and their symbolic meanings as backdrops. Dali’s surrealistic art form is echoed all through this film. The writer uses a crimson hibiscus flower in place of a rose in the story. Since the color crimson to no small extent signifies tragedy, it also represents love, everlasting love. Again, the “sleep” painting has a striking resemblance with that of Sylvia’s cropped up head, especially so when she extends it in anger at Richard in the park.
I am not too sure if I can view this film as the artist at war with his spirit, or ego. Yet, I can’t be far from the truth. Sylvia thinks she owns Richard, and couldn’t go anywhere without her. We see her visit the asylum and left the hibiscus flower with the nurse. To me, Richard is the flesh, and Sylvia, in the form of a woman, is the soul of Richard. The title of the movie, Sylvia, must have been coined from “Salvador” Dali’s name. Sylvia is a story of death, doom, and destruction. “It is “poetry, dark poetry,” this narrative, as nurse Karen could say. Am I making sense?