Netflix Worldwide Entertainment/Department of Trade and Industry South Africa presents Tyson Mathonsi, Thobeka Shangase, and Ntando Menzi Ncube, Shenzi Sibongiseni. Executive Producers, Gugulethu Zuma-Ncube, Pepsi Pokane; Producers, Pepsi Pokane, Mariki Van Der Walt; Writer, Thuli Zuma; Director of Photography, Tiyane Nyembe; Director, Fakile Mogodi. © 2024
Imagine a motion picture opening with worldwide photographic adventures; not even National Geographic has brought us such picturesque images of fully grown, mid-twenties, bare-breasted African females. I look at the picture of African women, in all pump and pageantry, breasts all bare, bouncing and marching in tandem to the ancestral drum, and I look up to the sky above me, and I thank my Lord for beholding such surreal, out-of-this-world scenery. The honey and ebony-colored tits, like freshly cut cocoa pods of breasts, march and come close to the camera as if to my face and mouth. And I say to myself, Lord, grant me the power to grab one of those pods in my mouth, make it mine, and take me afterward. To hell? I won’t care!
Come to think of it, Umjolo is about to introduce us to a relationship between two lovers, about to explore alternatives in polygamy or monogamy. We have seen this movie before, in Unbridled (2024). To be plain and fair, Umjolo and Unbridled are the same, and the difference is only in their names, one in English and the other in Zulu. Unbridled is about open marriage–multiple relationships; Umjolo explores multiple relationships or non-monogamy. Like in a speech, they both are straight and prolific in conveying the narratives. They both explore the most fearsome growing phenomenon in African marriages to date, once considered the most revered and traditional taboo, but now open to questions of, say, alternative marriages and even to the point of accepting a man marrying another man.
If I could compare Unbridled to Umjolo, the Nollywood production focuses more on the characters than the circumstances. Still, Umjolo goes out of its way to tell and show us the story in depth. “No, I was not cut for monogamy, Lethu; I just need to be able to have sex with other people, now and again, too, and come back home and still have us be okay,” Lucky blandly puts it to Lethu.” Lucky holds her head, face close to his, “All those other women are just…They are just warm bodies to scratch an itch. Okay?” By now Lethu is askance. “You want the truth, and I’m giving you that.” “If you need to sleep with other women, okay. It’s something you need. We can open the relationship. We can see other people casually,” This is the moment of truth in the story. She takes off her engagement ring and gives it back to Lucky.
The story of Umjolo is in-depth in contrast to the streamlined Unbridled. Lucky is in love with Lethu, a promoter of marriages and parties, but can’t let go of his street girls (philandering) until he gives his fiancé a communicable disease–the bad side of open relationships. She’s distraught and leaves him for a while, then goes into the village to her grandmother. The Grandmother advised her a life-long lesson: “Men cheat. All men are fornicators.” Upon returning to Lucky, he tells her he wants an open relationship and wouldn’t mind his fiancé hanging out with someone else. She accepts. Umjolo has a body and too much flesh on its bone. There’s Themba, a philandering older brother, who has a wife who keeps bursting him up over other women he hangs out with. Imagine the scene when she finds a G-string panty in his dirty laundry. The altercation is funny and memorable; with a cutlass, she runs after him to slaughter him.
All along, Lucky fools around with Amanda, a best friend of his fiancé, and she won’t let Lucky go. I think one power Amanda had over Lucky was she could give him her time (sex) anytime, anywhere, and the virile and hunk he is, he is all for it. This is where Lucky comes close to resembling his older brother, who has been caught and beaten up by schoolchildren and disgraced for hanging out with the wrong women, even as his wife is angry at him. Finally, she must take him to church, and the congregation prays over him before he changes from the philandering habit.
Another depth is when Lethu finds she has contracted chlamydia, a communicable disease possible only through sex, and for three years, she has never had outside sex. She is distraught and leaves him to go to her grandmother in the village. Like all grandmothers, she talks to her about going back to Lucky. He is not entirely satisfied with the arrangement he proposes, and he is hurt when Lethu starts hanging out with different men, even as she can’t give in to the lure of sex to them. It was first a bravado of a foolish kind, but he now feels the weight of his follies. He wants his girl back all to himself. In Unbridled, Jimmy must go on the net to look for a partner that fits his criteria for a wife in an open marriage. In Umjolo, the story has a related plot to the theme. See how Amanda cries her heart out to win over Lucky. He no longer wants the free and frequent sexual gestures from her. Lucky is hurting for Lethu, but she’s gone, as in the title, Gone Girl. Amanda, angry and disappointed, “You know what? Lucky I should have left you the day you gave me chlamydia.”
If I could borrow from George Orwell’s “All Art is Propaganda,” the overall effect of Umjolo and its extension to Unbridled sends subliminal immoral thematic messages to African movie-watching communities about the growing marital phenomenon. In Unbridled, Jimmy, a Jen Z with no grandmother or father who could teach him the value of marriage but takes all his cues from the tube (TV), believes there is no faithful marriage out there anymore and therefore opts for an open one where partners could take up anyone off the street to bed. Lucky in Umjolo thinks so, too– nonmonogamous. It is an admirable phenomenon from an “independence” point of view. And it will gradually spread as we follow the practices of our well-beloved celebrities (men kissing men) on film. Umjolo made a remarkable note in this film: Lucky is spreading chlamydia among all the seventeen girls he has had sex with and times that with the lives of all mates having contact with his victims. The bad side of open marriages could be a devastating (AIDS, for instance) social situation on our hands, not counting the deluge of DNA files on our desks. No, Unbridled and Umjolo are not trying to propagate open marriage through popular media; they are solely bringing to light the cravings of the most recent generation: “All Art is Propaganda.” Remember!
Apart from Nollywood, South African cinema makes good use of scenery, and natural sceneries mostly add not only to the beauty of the film but also to its value. Films shot behind closed doors restrict viewers’ knowledge of the beauty of the film. Beautiful scenery in films creates an illusion of depth, creating a three-dimensional world for the viewer; in other words, films are not communicating in their fullness. I have been there on the set of Watchin’ Lydia (Nubia Films). My budget couldn’t allow me to be extravagant financially, so I bargained on closed-door locations. Later, I found out that we locked out the viewers. We denied them the natural environs where such occurrences occur, thereby hampering the medium’s potential. African films, Nollywood in particular, would have to stop at bricks and concrete jungles, sleazy cars, and high-rise buildings to bring us natural and beautiful environments that our eyes could feed on in our movies.