Sonia Uche Production presents Maurice Sam (William), Sonia Uche (Nora), Ovunda Ihunwo (Desmond), Miracle Nebo Odaudo (Chioma). Director, Simon Chukwuemeka; Producer/Executive producer, Uche Nancy, Director of Photography, Chidie Okafor. ©2024.
Strange Attraction, they Christened the show. I rather not name it the way I see it. It’s a show, a show, to third power, and nothing more, nothing less. God, let Sonia don’t hate me for life for this. I have only been honest. Like every honest man you meet on the street and asks him, if your eighty years old face looks younger. You may want him to say what you think. “But yes, you look like a twenty-something.” The old face would go his way gloating in false appraisal of his wrinkled face. Strange Attraction is a Frederick Leonard pipeline production type: watered down schemes, designs and plots: Rich young girl falling in love with the driver of her car; a young attractive miss crushing on her driver; and a millionaire’s wife having a crush on a poor driver. Uche’s lukewarm plots and controversies have semblances of Leonard. They do not really hammer me out, like any soap opera. Same old, same old! There are no knockout blows to my viewing experiences.
Like I said in the introduction. Strange Attraction do not really have strange attractions. We do not have ghosts and goblins. Two characters come from opposite side of the world and meet for the first time–Sonia Uche (Nora) and William (Maurice Sam). William is a character from the same grain, as Nora’s father. He was once lucky to make it big in the Lagos dog-eat-dog world. He had come to regard all struggling youths with respect, counting on how he had come to be successful as well. Yet, he had an obligation to keep his young daughter, Nora, seemingly devoid of a boy or a gentleman caller to her room. So, he created a young muscular gateman for her, the kind most men would be jealous of, to come near their what nots; the kind which a Nollywood celebrity could ban from kissing his beautiful and lovely wife on screen.
Starting with the maid, Chioma (Miracle Nebo Odaudu), in his new environment he must come to terms with the aggressive maid before he could come to meet the young spoilt miss Nora of the mansion. Both Nora and the maid make William early life in the house miserable, to the point of ridiculous. William is, if we correctly eavesdropped on his telephone conversation with someone on the phone, under financial stress to pay a loan or some obligations, the story never elaborates. The antagonistic friction between Nora and William would have been little overplayed or drawn out, or elaborated on, to give the story dramatic skin. We must take sides at this point for both characters: William or young Miss Nora.
When Strange Attraction is used for a heading of this moving essay, we are looking around every corner, every nook and cranny, behind doors and window-blinds expecting the strangeness to jump at us from there. Nope. Every circumstance between William and Nora from the beginning of the show to the end seems like a water-down Frederick Leonard plot we have seen so many of. It happens that William and Nora have the same birth dates. This may seem convoluted but alas, and so what? It is a mere coincidence, and will not prove cinematic and dramatic value, if I was asked.
Strange Attraction is either a low-budget or no budget film. Accepted Uche uses her beautiful home as in most of her films, though we must be getting tired of seeing location after location of the same spot. One could ask where are the visual values? I’m referring to the cinematic value of the piece. Strange Attraction as a motion picture didn’t give us any location besides her living room. For example, Nora never left the house and was either in the kitchen, her bedroom or in the living room. In My Wife and I (2017) Ramsey Nouah and Oboli film, the walk of both Nouah and Oboli up the street holding hands, talking and the camera capturing the beautiful background, is one of the most memorable pictorials in Nollywood films. That is realism in film! That is the aura that makes movie pictures beautiful and mystic. Hollywood would frown on such projects as this.
Strange Attraction can be an unconventional attraction to something or someone out of the norm. Or attraction to something unusual. Is William really some unusual character that enters Nora’s life? May be, just maybe not. He did have a nice mohawk haircut and dresses not like a hoodlum, The father hired him, to be the agent that would bring coherence into the chaotic atmosphere of the household. It doesn’t seem Nora’s living situation was chaotic.
When I saw the title, Strange Attraction, my mind ran to the fatal type, as in Fatal Attraction (1987). And see what happens in Fatal Attraction, blood and gore and all. That fatal incident, seeing Michael Douglas bloodying it out with Glen Close in the last scene of the film. Strange Attraction would have gone farther with the drama, especially as I sensed William had a financial obligation to somebody. From the opening scene to the middle and to the last scene, Nora never left the house. With such credit as a producer, open the world of your characters rather than just moving them around the living room. The movie starts and ends with no visual value and that matter of fact decreases its commercial value as well.
One statement William made, which I must take away from this movie is, “There’s a different between broke and using hope.” This philosophical statement turns the tide between William and Nora. The once unfriendly environment in the household soon becomes a nest of lovers– Frederick Leonard way. The story becomes predictable from that point on, and the characters become flat like cardboard. In the next scene, they each have a glass of drink and joyfully turn a new page in the relationship. Nora dismisses the maid and only her and William are left. One must know what would be cooked in that kitchen as William is hard at slicing tomatoes to help prepare the meal, while Nora is a breath away, almost sniffing her once gateman.
“Hope in reality is the worst of all evils, because it prolongs man’s torments,” as Frederick Nietzsche would site in one of his treatises. At the end of the story, Desmond awards his daughter a brand-new car, but only promises, “William, send in your CV, Monday morning your birthday gift will be waiting for you.” If in future, Strange Attraction could morph into episodic project, here is an opening of a floodgate to another drama, bearing on the wise saying of Nietzsche. William shall spend the weekend looking forward to Monday–hope. What if his hope is shattered when an old girlfriend reports to the compound that she is the girlfriend, carrying William’s baby.