Brickwall Communications Ltd, Jungle Filmworks Inc. presents Genevieve Nnaji (Lola), Benjamin Joseph (Uzo), Bimbo Manuels (Counselor), Bimbo Akintola (Sandra), Tina Mba (Mrs. Jibike Bankole-Smith), Joke Silva (Lola’s Mother). Producer/Director, Mahmood Ali-Balogun; Screenplay, Femi Kayode; Director of Photography, Keith Holland. © 2011
‘Trying times’ in marriage can be a formidable bridge to cross. A couple lying side by side with each other in bed. Both mute, looking and counting the quiet rotation of the ceiling fan. They are both disconsolate and woebegone. In the wee hours of the morning, the husband touches his wife; he wants to have some. His wife revulsed against his touch and dresses away from him. She had been “soiled and tainted.” Other times, the wife feels for the husband, her hand rummaging down in his brief, the husband recoils. His manhood won’t rise to the occasion. They are both damaged goods. And Tango With Me is an experience in disguise.
A friend of mine happens with his wife in a dark four-by-four washroom, making it out with a maintenance man. True story. He blames his rotten gods, why he should witness such an ugly spectacle. Because of leftover respect for the ‘bitch,’ his word, not mine, he didn’t confront her with the incident. “She knew I was hurt, and I was, so I left it at that.” After the incident, he’ll come to bed late in the early morning hours, after downing half a crate of beer. A habit he took after he discovered the not-so-proud spectacle. And there she was, “a heap of a whore sleeping in my bed.” His disenchantment with her and the disgraceful washroom experience brought him nothing but dead manhood and suicidal thoughts. Lastly, he sued for divorce.
Tango With Me is about such ‘trying times’ in a marriage. Incidents occur in a marriage you’ll never want to share with your Mother, friends, and pastor. Lola (Genevieve Nnaji) and Uzo (Benjamin Joseph) met at the National Youth Service Training camp. They are a newlywed couple who goes to bunk in a hotel on their honeymoon. Lola is a virgin and can’t wait to be deflowered by Uzo this evening. She’s in the bathroom making up her face, powdering her neck. Oops! Criminals burst into their room, one of them rapes Lola as the restrained Uzo looks on.
The centerpiece of Tango With Me is in the ‘couch’ session Uzo and Lola to get over the hotel room experience on that fateful night. Lola and Uzo should sit in front of a shrink, a psychotherapist, Bimbo Manuel, the marriage counselor. The couple should divulge to him their innermost secrets they couldn’t share with friends and families and find the solution. Uzo, like most men, is not prepared to tell a perfect stranger the family problem. Lola is bent on saving the marriage; it means to say all. From her couch interviews, we get a glimpse of her household experiences after the rape.
Lola startled out of sleep and revulsed at the mere touch of Uzo. The recounting of the day’s event and laughter at the dinner table becomes mournfully quiet; They lost the joy in the Dike marriage. In bed at night, Uzo couldn’t do the manly thing like sex with Lola. One typical evening in the Dike family living room. Uzo comes home spent, almost dragging himself, and slouches on the lounge chair, oblivious of Lola. And this got to Lola. She gets up, stands close to Uzo’s face, looking up straight in the tall Uzo’s eyes.
Lola, “Look, it happened to me!” Her skinny hands pointing to her chest.
Uzo (stands), “Why do you think I was not raped as you were? I’m the one that has to sleep in the guest room because my wife can’t bear me touching her. I’m the one that can’t concentrate at work. I’m the one that might be losing his job.”
Lola has wide eyes, hearing of Uzo’s job loss; she is terrified. “What!?”
Lola goes to console him.
“No, I don’t want your pity. It’s all about you.”
The situation worsened when the couple discovers the raper left ‘the thing,’ incubating in Lola’s womb. Uzo, by any standard, be it tradition, belief, or religion, could not hear of it. Now comes the question of abortion or adoption and the test of faith. I have seen this scene play out in Walk In The Dark (2013). Do you remember that movie, Mercy Johnson got pregnant for Van Viker, outside her intended husband? The Mother favored abortion for economic reasons, and the Father was against it for religious reasons.
In any admirable relationship, there’s always someone waiting in the wing, in the dark, to exploit the awful situation. Mrs. Jibike Bankole-Smith, Uzo’s Boss, had had an eye for the young man, Uzo. She uses the deplorable condition of Uzo and snares him to her lair. Oh, Uzo is virile; he can make a woman heave a sexual sigh for a minute. Not what Lola called him “impotent.”
The idea of Lola having an unborn child in her womb further taints the relationship to an unimaginable height. Uzo drops the ‘couch’ session entirely and leaves Lola going by herself. Lola’s friends and the world around her notices she’s pregnant, but not for Uzo. She moves in with her parents but has to let her husband co-sign his name to the adoption of the unborn child she carries since no divorce yet. Uzo loves Lola alright, but his body language goes south on that one. He’s impatient. Anxious. He goes into solace. See how Uzo holds Lola by the wrist, dragging her from the doctor’s. Poor girl, she’s helpless, split between a love of her life and religion.
Let us delve a little into the mindset of Lola and Uzo in the face of this crisis. Not the Yoruba and Igbo idiosyncrasy crisis. We are stuck with that; I’m thinking about the couple’s different religious persuasions as they affect the drama. Uzo is not like his Catholic wife; he is a born-again Baptist. Why anybody could be born again, only God knows. He is shifty and untrustworthy, as the screenwriter Femi Kayode characterizes him. Uzo cheats with his boss in the office during the crisis. He wants an abortion badly.
Lola is Catholic to the T. You see her with the rosary wherever she goes. Her belief is staunch. Steadfast. “Don’t get pregnant, but if you did, you’re bound to keep it,” Catholic encyclicals confirm it. Listen to her monologue in this scene. “What kind of Christian would I be? It will haunt me. Every time I hear a child cry or laugh, I will remember. It would be like a dark cloud hovering over me. “This too shall pass,” Lola says resignedly at length. That monologue scene resembles John Steinbeck’s famous line in Grapes of Wrath: “Wherever they’re a fight so hungry people….”
Joke Silva! Joke Silva! The last of the Mohicans, no, Nollywood lady standing. She acts gracefully. Maybe that is why God gave her a broad majestic chest with a constant load of a beautiful smile that could disarm hearts made of stone. Look how she tangos with her husband so gracefully. She was the Bible-toting mother-in-law in Potato Potahto (2017). Truly funny. See her dishing out food for her lost and found and estranged, hungry son-in-law, OC Ukeji. (Mrs. Wilson/Tony scene). In Tango With Me, Lola’s Mother didn’t quite understand her Igbo son-in-law, Uzo, to play an authoritative and judicial part in the relationship. She stays aloof. She has been against marriage in the first place. “I warned you not to marry an Igbo man and…a Baptist!” Lola’s Father doubled.
Here, Benjamin Joseph is not out to be funny, his acting niche. The script compels him to be in an unimaginable dilemma. A predicament we may call it. It was written all over him. In his face, I mean his entire general disposition in the face of crisis. First, he binges drinks with Mrs. Jibikeh and comes home to his wife drunk, and soon, he becomes nearly alcoholic. Love conquers all in the end. See how he rushed into the maternity wardroom when Lola had the girl. A respectable screenplay assigns actual names to the players against Lola’s Mother, Lola’s father. Don’t they deserve names? Good movie.