Kountry Culture Network presents Bovi Ugboma (Victor), Nicole (Ini Dima Okojie), Chief Hernandez (Jude Chukwuka), Mrs. Hernandez (Shaffey Bello), Najitude Dede (Fowey), Adunni Ade (Caroline) Thelma Ezeamaka(Augusta), Nancy (Amanda Ebgye ), Omonigho (Gregory Ojefua), Omoni Oboli (Angela), Stan (Bash), Femi Durojaiye (Dede)Toni Tones Adefuye (Stacy). Director, Aneide Awah Noba, Aduni Ade, Omobo.a Akinde, Shaffey Bello; Writer, Bovi ugboma; DOP, Emeka Paul Madu, Chuks Oteke; Produced by Bovi Ugboma. © 2016
“It’s her day! It’s her day! It’s her day!” Mrs. Hernadez, the mother of the intended bride keeps shoving the phrase in our ears. No, it ain’t. It’s someone else’s, far removed from the drama at hand, away from the Hernandez family mansion. Victor (Bovie Ogboma) wakes up one morning with a bright and promising smile. He seemed to have achieved the epitome of life, by intending to marry into a wealthy family. Victor’s fairy tale wedding expectation to marry the crown jewel of Chief e (Jude Chukwuka) and Mrs. Hernandez’s (Shaffey Bello) family was a pipe dream.
When they arrive from the UK at Lagos airport, Nicole (Ini Dima Okojie) demonstrates to us that she’s a spoilt brat, whose character as an uppity future bride of Victor, could respect no one on this earth, and that she was selfish, overbearing, pompous and, hifalutin. I dismiss the young lady as one living on cloud nine of life above everyone else. At the airport, she embarrasses Victor’s intended best man for a cab driver, by yelling at him to load her baggage in a car. Victor’s friend, Omonigbo (Gregory Ojifua), is quick to find out her true character and forewarned Victor about the intended bride, Nicole.
“… you said you are funding the entire wedding?”
“Yes.”
“This fairy tale wedding she desires…”
“Yes. What?…. Say what’s on your mind now.”
“Victor, a fairy-tale wedding doesn’t come cheap….I mean where do you plan on getting the money from?… You haven’t received your salary and you are already spending it. What is wrong with you?”
“You don’t know the number of foolish things we men do because of love.”
This is the predicament that awaits Victor. He doesn’t have the wherewithal to fund a fairy-tale wedding. He doesn’t even have the energy to swallow the hifalutin and overbearing Hernandez family, but he still dreams he can handle it against the warning of his friend, and intended would-be bridesmaid for Victor, and who because of his shaggy appearance, Mrs. Hernandez and Nicole—the intended bride—and her three siblings, Augusta (Thelma Ezeamaka), Nancy (Amanda Agbeye), and Stacy (Toni Tones Adefuye) didn’t want to see Omonigbo in their home, or around Victor. “Sweetie, I think it’s best if your friend waits outside,” Nicole commands Victor about Omonigbo.
It is everyone’s wonder why Victor insists on marrying into a family that doesn’t have regard for him and his family and friends. At the initial wedding planning, in total, two hundred and twenty guests were to be invited and only twenty were to come from the groom’s family. During the traditional wedding, Nicole couldn’t chew the customary kola-nut, or drink the palm wine, and worst of all, she cries her heart out because she was strewn with nairas instead of the United States dollars.
Before the wedding itself, Victor has been worn out completely into a man in a daze. Half the time, the Hernandez family keeps bombarding him with expenses and making an impossible requests to him that he hardly knew what he was doing. At a certain point, his imagination got hold of him: He folded the list of wedding items and pelted Caroline with it; banged hard on the table to the astonishment of Mrs. Hernandez, and turned around and shake the hell out of Nicole. That’s how insane he became over this fairy-tale wedding. He has dug a hole, he can’t get out of.
However, his old but abandoned sweetheart, Angela (Omoni Oboli) still cared for him. On an uninvited visit to her one night, he was disappointed to find her in the company of another man. Later, on another occasion, he meets Angela in a restaurant and the scene turns out to be the moment of truth.
Victor calls off the fairy-tale wedding as he had got it to his neck when at the alter, in front of the Pastor and guests, Nicole couldn’t accept the ring Victor has but demanded a diamond-encrusted wedding band. And he called his posse to get into their lineup of kekes to Angela’s house and presents her with the ring.
The takeaway from this film or story is not to expose the overbearing and insolent nature of the Hernandez, for that part of their character is laying bare. The emphasis here is the character of Victor. His relationship with his parents and friend, Omonigbo, who at one point, gives his stomach some slugs to dispel the Demons of Victor. In the scene when Victor is telling his parents the type of dress and appearance they should have at the wedding. Not the Agbada or “traditional attire.” And that there will be no kola nut breaking at the wedding. The parents are flabbergasted.
Pa, “If kola is not to be broken and you are happy with that, well, all good. I’m fine, go ahead.”
Then memorable scenes include the restaurant scene where Angela pours the truth about the character of Victor:
Victor, “I don’t know what came over me. I want you to forgive me. Love came over me. I think it’s that love that made me kind of mess you up. I don’t want you to feel like you lost me for something special. I’ve gone too far. Like I dug a hole and I can’t climb out of it.”
Angela, “You know, you really have to stop lying to yourself. The truth is, you are a great guy. You’re so funny. You make people laugh—a Comedian in real life. You are a people person. But beneath all that, beneath the mask, is a past that is laced with deprivation. A past you are trying so hard to run away from. You are so ashamed of your background and where you are coming from. You’re living a false life. Look at you. You’re so fake. Very soon, you’re going to start lying to keep up appearances. That’s why you can put up with this shit that you are putting up with right now.”
You should see Victor’s face and his changed demeanor when the truth hits him home.
“What’s the bill? I need to leave now.”
“Oh, a piece of my mind, that’s what I ordered. But you can go. It’s on the house.”
Let me sum up the description of Victor by Angela as in this moment of truth in the story:
But don’t let my glad expression/Give you the wrong impression
Really I’m sad, oh I’m sadder than sad…/But in my lonely room I cry
The tears of a clown/When there’s no one around….
Now if there’s a smile on my face/Don’t let my glad expression
Give you the wrong impression.
Tears of a Clown/Smokey Robinson.
It’s Her Day is not about Nicole’s day. Victor leaves her and her mother hysterically crying when he calls the wedding off. In an actual sense, and the way the story plot is twisted, it is Angela’s day.