Shutter Speed Projects and David Wade Productions present Bijola Aiyeola (Boma), Bolaji Ogunnola (Donna), Bukumi Adega-Ilori (Fade), Emmanuel Ikubese (Azeem), Kachi Nnochiri (Xavier). Director, Biodum Stephen; Screenplay, Mannie Oiseomaye; Producers, Biodum Stephen, Tara Ajibulu; Director of Photography, Biola Ladipo; Executive Producer, Tara Ajibula, Biodun Stephen, Kayode Sowade; ©2021.
There’s no simple lie. I can point you to the Bible, Ephesians 4:25– “Therefore, having put away falsehood, let each of you speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members of one another.” There’s nothing like a simple lie! Imagine the devastation a simple lie could cause for the person lied to or the moral burden of the person lying. Lies dupe a man to believe falsely. Lies cause a man or woman to give life’s goodness to the undeserved generously. Another somebody says, “Tell a lie once, and all your truths become questionable.”
A ‘simple lie’ could turn dangerous and mischievous. In A Simple Lie, Boma asks Donna to hook her up with a partner because she has been going celibate for quite some time—a well-to-do woman, owner of Eat and Mingle speakeasy restaurant, and a lifetime member of Lagos high society, yet couldn’t get a man to lay her. She’s about to go into menopause; all female characters in A Simple Lie, like her, are almost menopausal. Those are the ones you must be careful with. Their hormones are running like free radicals in their body system. They’ll wake up in the middle of the night, wake you up too, poor mama’s kid, only to tell you they’re running hot. Sure enough, they are Sahara hot; they are wet like they let out a hot pee on themselves. You can’t even go back to sleep when she’ll yell again, “I’m freezing!” Unbearable and unmanageable humbugs!
Donna (Bolaji Ogunnola) looked in her leftover log of old friends. That one could cry on their shoulders–the kinds spinsters keep on the shelve for rainy nights; ones at their beck and call, and they come running. A hand me down, sort of. Donna hooks Boma (Bijola Aiyeola) with Xavier (Kachi Nnochiri), a hunk Donna has fooled with and is still fooling with even as married to Azeem. Xavier has no expository source of living. Boma likes him, as his sex is good, once she continues to milk the cow. On the morning after the first night of sex with Boma, she sniffs his scent on the pillow and comments dreamily, “Such a hunk.”
Such a hunk as Xaviar is, no woman could give him off so easily. He had had sex with Donna, and as a matter of fact, plenty of times before pushing him over to Boma, the sex-starved spinster. But Xavier had not had enough of Donna’s good sex; he yelled Donna’s name once while having sex with Boma. Donna’s husband, Azeem, is in love with her and proposes a bribe to Xavier, unbeknownst to her, to quit his rendezvous with his wife.
Through the writer’s dramatic technique, he gathers his characters in a single location through mere craftiness. Donna learns of Boma’s malaise through a phone call Xavier made to her. She grabs her car key and storms out the door. On her way to Boma, she alerts her husband of Boma’s sickness; when he asks how she knew, “Xavier called me.” Xavier called you? Azeem cuts his business meeting short and storms to Boma. All roads lead to Boma’s house; the mention of Xavier on the phone triggers Azeem’s old jealousy. Lastly, a spinster friend of Boma, Fade (Bukumi Adega-Ilori), arrives. Once all are in their seats, the story and its dialogue take the shape of The Visit (2015) or Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf (1966), when characters in each film spill the beans on each other.
A Simple Lie starts here: Boma is desperate to lure Xavier into loving her and tells a simple lie to him that she has been diagnosed with cancer. A simple lie, she thought. It is desperation at its core. Xavier shares the secret with Donna. Donna tells her husband, Azeem, that Xavier calls her and reports Boma’s demise. After all, Azeem’s temperature boils to explosive heights; why should Donna speak with Xavier? “Boma with cancer?” Donna thought. She also informs Boma’s sister, Lara (Blessing Jessica Obasi), and Lara, in turn, tells their mother, who faints at the news. Not so much the cancer diagnosis Boma reported to Azeem, as to why Donna would hear about it from Xavier. Had he not promised Xavier a lump sum to stay away from his wife? Not even a phone call?
To this point, A Simple Lie is seemingly like the nursery rhyme ‘The House That Jack Built’–one event leading to another. Just as Donna surprises Boma by visiting her house to see an ailing friend, questioning how Donna heard of her cancer diagnosis, Azeem is also angry when he learns his wife Donna heard of Boma’s condition through Xavier. He is alarmed to note that Xavier and his wife, Donna, are still communicating after he had warned him to stay away. However, he, too, feels Boma is an old friend with whom he has had sex as well and must see her. He comes to Boma’s house. Donna and her husband, Azeem, now gather at Boma’s house. Then comes Xavier, Azeem’s nemesis, with a bowl of peppery fried chicken for Boma. Xavier drops a bomb when he tells Donna she may participate in the peppery chicken snack. Azeem won’t have it. “What? Are you daft that my wife now eats pepper?” The tensions between Azeem and Xavier over the spicey chicken brew are explosive, and they are about to murder each other. After the altercation, Xavier got an ice pack on the side of his head. All this after a simple lie.
You may have been confused about Mannie Oiseomaye’s characters as they stand and talk over each other, even with a fistfight between Azeem and Xavier. One admiration for the writer is that he streamlined the story and avoided creating melodrama by not including, for instance, childbearing issues, which would have called for paternity tests, thereby taking a deep dramatic curve in the story. He summarizes his resolution when Boma’s mother and family storm into the yard, yelling, “Boma Is Dead!” Only to find out that Boma is well and well. Boma’s simple lie shakes them up. A Simple Lie is entertaining because the characters play their parts honestly and believably. Most scenes leave you laughing. Like the scene when Fade queries Boma: “…and she’s a cow! Because only a cow will lie like that; she has cancer to get cheap attention from a goat like you. You didn’t say malaria, Boma; you didn’t choose typhoid!”
As quoted in Ephesians 4:25, “…the truth with his neighbor, for we are members of one another.” These characters have shared lives, and it seems they equally enjoy the escapades they are playing once they know what is hidden is all out in the open through a simple lie. Now that they have put away all falsehoods, as they say, the truth shall set them free.