Oracle Films Production presents Blossom Chukwujekwu (Desmond), Ebeke Okaro (Mama Nonso), Lilian Echelon (Rose), Betty Belor (Ugo), JKA Swanky (Nelo), Chibueke Oku (Nonso), Issac Momoh (Obinna). Director/Director of Photography, Okechukwu Oku; Executive Producer, Queendalyn Oku; Story/Screenplay, Beth Rogers. ©2018
Once in a while, reviewers trade places with viewers. The viewers can see through the lens of the producers. They cry with them and rejoice with them. Give them a pat on their backs for a work well done. But the reviewers see through the photographers’ artistic lens, and along the line, study the story in earnest. The reviewer sees a different image or characters on the screen. Honestly, my eyes welled up a tear or two by the end of this story.
A poor innocent Rose (Lilian Echelon), purporting to be the excellent and promising child in the family of five, falls under Desmond’s demonic attention (Blossom Chukwujekwu). The gem of the family turns out to be Rose. Responsible, caring, and hardworking. But she disproves the family hardship and wants to improve life for them, and that is why she quits school and helps her mother in the cookery shop. When Desmond (Demon?) brings his car to the maintenance shop to fix and runs into Rose, one would think life for Mama Nonso’s children and family would improve. Of course, it did. For a minute, though. Gifts were coming in from this strange fellow with the jeep. The little girl of a lamb had no clue the kind of man’s company she was getting into.
Rose has a sister, Ugo (Betty Belor), who had left school early to prostitute herself and help their single mother. Still, Mama Nonso is not appreciative of what she does. With tears after tears, the mother blames her for prostituting even as she domestically helps with food and other expenses. Mama Nonso’s fear is that Ugo will sooner or later influence her little sister, Rose.
Yet, Mama Nonso exposes little Rose to the cookery business. She runs into a clean-cut, smooth talker from the affluent side of town. Desmond brings his jeep for maintenance to the shop nearby the cookery. He asks for food service from Rose. They both get acquainted. “why aren’t you in school? You seem intelligent,” Desmond asks her.
Desmond has appeared to Mama Nonso’s daughter like an angel. Everyone, including the viewer, sees Desmond to be a godsend for this little girl. One would think, he’ll help her through school, and the neighborhood shall admire her as one of the lucky few when she would have visited the community as a doctor. It starts out alright. Desmond showers the little girl of a lamb with prodigious lavishing of money on her. Mama Nonso isn’t entirely pleased:
Mama Nonso, “But why do you want us to cook for you?”
Desmond, “You want to know the truth?”
Mama Nonso chuckles.
“I just want to help, for Rose’s sake. She didn’t say much. She once said she’s looking forward to going back to school whenever you can afford it. And I figured this wasn’t much. So I want to help…And knowing that you’re a very hardworking woman who would instead earn every penny, I came up with this idea. She’s a very good girl for all I can see, with lots, lots of potentials. Untapped potential.”
Mama Nonso gets sold on the idea of letting Rose or herself cook for Desmond. Rose’s visit to Desmond becomes lucrative. She comes home with ten to fifty thousand nairas at one time. Rose’s relationship with Desmond has gone beyond an average cook and other tertiary services. Desmond kisses the sixteen-year-old lamb of a little girl and even had sex with her. To the little lamb, it’s all love, pure romance, especially with the kind of money Desmond spends on her. “I like the way you eat…your strong arms…your smile,” Rose confesses to Desmond. “If you keep saying that, we gonna fall into trouble Real trouble.” Desmond retorts.
The reviewer may find that this story is beyond his expectation. The
level is far more profound than his thoughts. From this point on, the story takes a macabre turn. Desmond has a motley crew of men, which we are not given to know too much of. From a distance, these fellows smoke, drug, and are seemingly the financiers of Desmond’s luxurious life. In return, he supplies underage girls to these motley friends for sex. Mostly, Desmond drugs them, as we see he does to Rose, and his friends have group sex with the poor girl. He even contracts Rose to a friend for money.
At such times, Rose would come home with lots of money but always off-color and not a smiling face. And her mother suspecting something gruesome, and Rose isn’t telling, would say, “When good fortune smiles on people, it won’t take away their smile.”
e. The story takes a dark form when Desmond uses Rose as a sex object to supply his friends. She introduces the poor girl to cocaine, alcohol, smoking, and group sex. Rose goes along with this trick because she falls purely in love with Desmond. Especially when Desmond cries in her arm that he owes people and Rose must help him pay them. But when she eavesdrops on a phone conversation Desmond has with Abbey, she runs from there and goes back home to her mother. She learns of the true color of Desmond.
Blame the poor figment of my imagination that goes wild sometimes when it comes time for me to write some reviews. You could assume I am running wild with another imagination here. Don’t we see Desmond and his motley crew of friends and Rose here in the light of Epstein and his life and riches. For example, if the film had not ended the way it does, in the last phone conversation, before the wrap, Abbey threatens to kill Desmond if he doesn’t send Rose over to him.
There’s a sense of paradox in the story. Mama Nonso hates her oldest daughter’s life for being a prostitute but gives Rose over to Desmond. He exposes the little underage girl to prostitution, drug, and alcohol because she is poor. Ugo finds cocaine and alcohol on the table by Rose in a stupor on the bed in the obligatory scene. In that scene, Rose confesses and blames but forgives everyone to who her life is connected. She has become the worst of their mama’s fears.
“When I met Desmond, I thought he was heaven sent to help us leave this place. I don’t blame Desmond for looking like a savior that could help me…I don’t blame you, Ugo… I don’t blame mama. I don’t blame papa. How come we don’t get to choose where we are born? I don’t blame life for being so unfair,” Rose confesses as she weeps.
Blossom Chukwujekwu’s last film I reviewed was Oloture, when he embedded his young cub-reporter in the human trafficking gang. Unfortunately, the reporter got carried away and joined the traffickers to Europe. She was a virgin as well. Does Blossom like to trade in virgins in films he plays lead roles?
This is my first review of Lilian Echelon. She nails her part as Rose. Her short life in Nollywood already garnered her for Black Rose, The Golden Movie Award for 2018 Best Discovery; Best Actor Female in Black Rose. We close the film with a whimsical voice-over of Ugo. “This is my mother’s story. We are waiting for our own time, our own destinies. And it’s only just begun.” Yes, life for Lilian Echelon is just begun. I won’t say much, but I’m glad I discovered her.