The Entertainment Network presents, Genevieve Nnaji (Victoria), Oris Erhuero (Izu), Majid Michel (John), Chioma Omeruah (Onome), Ieoma Ibeawuchi (Abigail). Director, Ishaya Bako; Producer, Chichi Nwoko, Chinny Onwugbenu, Genevieve Nnaji; Director of Photography, Idowu Adedapo; Screenplay, Emil B. Garuba, Ishaya Bako; Story by, Genevieve Nnaji. © 2015.
This is Genevieve’s first major gig as a producer, and I commend her for that. Normally with the first gig as a producer, lots of mistakes are made but there ‘s no such in The Road to Yesterday. And if ever there’s a critical look at the project, that would be addressed to the screenplay. The screenplay’s principal character was doomed from the origin. I do understand that the road to yesterday in most of our lives is never pleasant, and therefore we always go North rather than about facing to go back South.
Victoria (Genevieve Nnaji) and Izu (Oris Erhuero) must have had a youthful, and ‘don’t care,’ relationship. They met in a night-club; Victoria is introduced to Izu by a club-mate, John (Majid Michel); both Izo and Victoria are heavy drinkers; they are surrounded by lots of unmarried drinking friends. Both haven’t really matured enough to take family responsibilities. We see one night at the stairs landing when both have come from out, drunk, and almost about to have sex there and little Abby walks on them.
It doesn’t surprise me when they had got lost on the feeder roads going to the funeral of Izu’s uncle, and Izu asks Victoria, “Tell me, how the hell did we get here? That question is an irony, not particularly about them getting lost in the wilderness, but their marriage, and their relationship itself. I will belabor to answer Izu’s question as to how they both got where they are. I wish they had an adult around them to help as GPS to navigate their lives. Figuratively, even their phones got dead.
When Victoria is in her estranged husband’s house, one senses there’s friction between the couple. Izu is reclusive, angry at Victoria for something at this point, not clear to the viewer, and he couldn’t stay home for dinner and in fact, doesn’t want to see Victoria home after seven-thirty next morning when he’ll be leaving on a funeral trip to his village. The morning comes and he’s ready to start the trip to the village, Victoria insists she’ll have to go and in fact should drive. During this trip, Victoria and her husband spent the entire trip, disclosing the dirty laundries each had left behind in the closet of their minds.
Izu had been a philandering husband to a truthful girlfriend Victoria and upon her birthday, she had walked upon him having an affair with another woman in his office. The woman had seen the face of Victoria. She had kept the secret from Izu for all years until in the forest, on the road to his village. He shows signs of a surprise but not apologetic.
A little bit afterward he too asks for confession from Victoria about the diagnosis of their daughter Abby, who happens to have sickle-cell anemia, and the DNA paternity had excluded Izu as the father. They had broken over this and had asked her to leave his home, but now, he wants to know, “whatever happened.”
The same night she caught her boyfriend with a lover in the office, she packed few things and walked out to her spinster group of friends and they urged her to go clubbing, especially it was her birthday. There, she runs into John (Majid Michel) and after too many drinks both sleep together. She does so more in a drunken spur rather than retribution. Yet, there and that night, she conceived little Abby.
From the point of confession on, Izu and Victoria take the road to redemption. The narcissistic character Izu demonstrates from the time Victoria comes back into the household washes away like it wasn’t there. For the first time, the husband and wife are civil to one another. He sits by her on the bed, looks in her eyes and says, “Sorry.” He becomes friendly and cordial, follows her into the shower, ladders her back and even kisses her on the neck. And in the motel bedroom, he whispers, “I forgive you.”
The Road to Yesterday is a beautiful romantic tragedy the household of Izu and Victoria experienced. Even as his wife begs him not to go out on the town, he still walks out the door, just when both have decided to turn a new page in the relationship, Izu dies in a road accident. “We will talk when I come back.” He says. He never comes back.
Ninety-five percent of The Road…Is told in a flashback. Most flashbacks in stories by inexperienced producers take lives of their own. Here, Genevieve brings the flashback scenes intermittently, economically, and short. I only have one wish though: The Road to Yesterday would have been sweeter by the use of a voice-over narrative technique, and from Victoria’s POV.
In a film, when a writer mentions something or give a gun to a character, we expect the character to use that gun. We never got to see the funeral of Izu’s uncle. And by voice-over narrative, I believe there must have been one-liner in dialogue, the reason why. That way we can plainly understand the narrative. However, Emil B. Garuba and Ishaya Bako create a family that is out to bury the hatchet but ends up burying Izo.