Unbridled

Whitestone Cinema Ltd/ African Movie Channel Production present Jimmy Odukoya (Yinka), Sandra Okuzuwa, Delroy Norman (Besola), Emeka Darlington, Alexandra Igwe. Calista Nwajide, Rachel Edwards, Trinity Ogonado, Vich Vitalis. Director, Paul Igwe; Screenwriter, Chris Bonnie; Producer, Paul Igwe; Director of Photography, Samuel Rolands © 2024.   

You may define Unbridled any way you want: uncontrolled, unconstrained, or whatever, Roget’s Thesaurus, Webster or Google dishes out to you in the form of definitions, and synonyms. For your benefit, I must add ‘untamed,’ to lighten your load. The lead player here must have been an understudy to Ramsey (I miss him, I mean Ramsey Nouah) on the screen in new movies. Check out his nuances: his gestures and kind of offhanded way of dismissing his girls, like he doesn’t care the f**k about them. That is the form he takes in Private Storm (2010) with Omotola, and our leadman here Yinka, mimmicks. But you know, every dog has its day in life, they say. Yinka (Jimmy Odukoya) is the unbridled horse of a man of Alex type in Private Storm he wants to be, this story is about.

The writer tells his story in a parallel plot line. There is a sick fellow who the doctor has said has no chance of beating stage four pancreatic cancer right in front of his fiancé, Besola, even though the doctor didn’t want to make such disclosure in her presence. Tobe insisted she stay. He becomes disillusioned and hopeless after the disclosure and senses he will die anytime, possibly in six months, as the Doctor tells him. So, he generously gives up Besola away. Being honest with himself and his fiancé, he gives her off. She could find, a healthier, better love than him. That is the last time Tobe sees Besola as he enters thin air, leaving the poor girl pouring tears in his wake. She’s distraught.  However, life must go on.

On the other side of town is Yinka–a playboy and womanizer who changes girls like underwear. Yes, he lives in a break heart mansion.  And his physic is all the type girls want—pure Mandingo stature. But Yinka has this unorthodox approach to dating and eventually towards marriage. Not only do his friends think he is queer, one of his girls comments he needs to see a psychiatrist. Not that Yinka doesn’t want to get married, but he wants an open marriage: you date who you want and sleep with, who you wish outside the marriage. Tell that to a Nigerian father; the elders would almost take you to the evil forest because that is an abomination never imagined and never heard of.  I do not blame him for who he is, but for the kind of girls he has been dealing with, dragging their suitcases from one boyfriend’s bungalow to another. And Yinka, most of the time, doesn’t even remember their names. You could see when he calls one of his girls the wrong name and see her fume.

You may feel offended by Yinka’s unorthodox approach to marital affairs compared to conventional African beliefs. I swear I see your point. I’m out of a thirty-five years of marriage from a woman who, swear to the Bible that she will love me to the end of times. She never believed in end of times, she was on a mission. Yinka is a Gen Z, a creed that lives and breathes social media; his minds is fed by the world community that lives on the internet–the nowadays, grandfathers or mothers. He believes them more than what the preachers in the pulpit say to him if he is ever a churchgoing type. Hardly. He has come to think that there’s no more love left in this world. Everything is transactional and businesslike. A contract, sort of. A cohabitation contract. These days, it needs work to make any of these spousal things work, he presumes. He resigns to a liberal attitude. He may even bargain on swingers club membership.  

Yinka posts a request for a noncommittal relationship on social media. Besola (Delroy Norman) gets into a relationship with Yinka over this. Everything seems mechanical in a meeting between the contractual lovers, Besola/Yinka, like an orchestrated arrangement. Yinka lays out his condition first, primarily focusing on another man’s freedom. “I like that,” Besola says. The conditions she lays on the table are just one more clause shy of the Ten Commandments. And she finally adds, “At any time, I am ready to work out of this marriage. I can do so.” They both clink their wine glasses to it.

Besola is a straight shooter. One characteristic Yinka sees in her is, that she is seemingly not the type that turns out to be the couch potato, ear glued to a phone with nail polish in one hand and busy with toenails. Yinka senses Besola has substance, the domesticating type. Is that what Yinka all the time been wanting in the women folks? This is the character turnaround point in the story. See how Yinka enjoys the Amala dish Besola prepares for them. I am asking myself when this player last had a home-cooked meal. He enjoys the grub and runs into town to tell his friends about the “beautiful soul he has found.” With the help of an Amala launch at home, on a clean and sparky dining table, Yinka has been sold to Besola. His open marriage belief is crumbling in front of pretty Besola.

When the screenwriter, Chris Bonnie, throws another curve ball in this drama by Tobe, again appearing to lay claims to Besola, at Yinka’s residence asking for her hand, Yinka gives her up as she is willing to break and go with Tobe. Remember the last clause in her contract: “I have the right to walk from this union without prior notice, and so be you.” “Fair enough,” Yinka had said. Yinka gives up with no qualms. He sees them off, stands with teary eyes, and returns to the empty living room without Besola. Not long after, Besola reenters the living room with her luggage. She prefers to stay with Yinka.   

Yinka’s problem isn’t psychological, as his second girlfriend, the one he shoos out the door like a rabid dog, will assume that Yinka had a heartbreak from a woman or that he hails from a dysfunctional family. Oh, that tickled Yinka up and helped her pack. Yinka grew up watching Nollywood movies; they’re all about floundering husbands and cheating wives. He has looked at marriage as fake, and lacks trust for any woman. But this unbridled horse is eventually reined in and tamed to see love in its true colors. Here, the writer presents two opposite defective (Yinka, open marriage; Besola, experimental marriage) characters, that end up as two dimensional in the story, they both turn hundred and eighty degrees from the characters they start out with. Kudos to the writer.