A Film neither written, directed nor photographed"

It really is beyond disgraceful that films like Chinaza Onuzo’s A Lagos Love Story are presented as a flagship production in the Nigerian film industry. This film fails at achieving everything it aimed at. It follows the story of a vaguely ambitious Promise (Jemima Osunde), who, in a quarter-hearted effort to preserve the mythical legacy of her mother by preventing their house from closure, embarks on a journey of financial stability that crosses her path with that of King Kator (Mike Afolarin) an afrobeats star. After a series of back and forth, they fall in love.

This cheesy melodramatic nonsenseness, co-written by Chinaza Onuzo and Ozzy Etomi is a film neither written, directed nor photographed. Its title is eponymous with a track from Ayra Starr’s second studio album, it also uses song as its theme song. It features a bootleg of afrobeats star ‘Asake’, has afrobeats music plastered across, like some sort of remedy for its narrative woundedness. With its heavy reference to afrobeats, this amateurish afrobeats montage fails as a homage to Ayra Starr or Asake or Afrobeats or Lagos or romance or cinema.

The actors wander like self-controlled puppets in melodramatic goal-oriented foolishness, paying barely any attention to the emotional process that leads to the goal. They are fluid, inconsistent, and their personalities promptlessly change to fit the bland ‘destination over process’ nature of the film. The actors only bear a mouse’s share of the blame as the film was not written, it was rather built around a list of end points and actors were dumped in scenes with an impractical responsibility of fixing a messy screenplay.

In Promise’s first encounter with King Kator, she is invited to the party of a Lagos elite by the bourgeois Fadakemi (Linda Ejiofor) whose company is organising the Art & Culture week — not as a guest, but for an interview. She is unable to get in, as she left for the venue right after concluding management duties at her church’s children’s harvest programme, and her sister, Favour (Susan Pwajok) who is meant to meet her up with the access card, is having delays. King Kator and his entourage appears, causing a quiet crowd outside the venue to become lively, Promise lends an ear, she stares inquisitively, to understand, we cut to Kator walking forward with eyes behind as he waves at the lively crowd, we immediately cut to Shege Baba (Kunle Oshodi-Glover), one of Kator’s entourage yelling, “madam clear road.” We then cut back to Promise, her curiosity vanishes, she is looking in the opposite direction, King Kator bumps into her. They hold each other like reconciled lovers and fall to the ground in slow motion while a Cinderella-esque sound plays. Perhaps intended to inform an incoming love affair, it turned out to be a melodramatic blunder with dead pacing, and borrowed disney magic, failing to cast a spell.

After a failed attempt at casting a spell, we are presented with some sort of obligatory feminist gesture. Promise is in, a catering staff helped her get in with her tag, Fadakemi dismisses her for being ten minutes late, she walks away burdened, as though a valid ambition had just slipped through her fingers. She sees Favour, who has now arrived at the venue and is making a video. She confronts her, expresses her frustration, and angrily walks away — bumping into King Kator again. Favour rushes to the scene, Kator notices Favour’s camera still rolling, he assumes they were trying to exploit him for social media clout, he demands that Favour deletes the video, she instead resorts to noise-making — Adanna (Uche Montana), the daughter of the minister of works, steps in to defend them. Promise and her gang quickly turn this misunderstanding to a feminist showdown against patriarchy, demanding an apology, “The two of you will apologize to me, and you will apologize to these two women, and you will do it on camera”. This intent of empowerment translates poorly as a hollow spectacle — a reduction of feminism to opportunistic troublemaking, and egotistic fulfillment devoid of emotional depth. This moment exemplifies the film’s lack of writing and its thoughtless drive to reach end points without any regard for process and logic.

One begins to ask, what exactly does this film do well? Frankly, almost nothing. The cinematography is ugly; the camera wanders like a lost soul at war with redemption, there are moving shadows of the camera operator. The editing is a nonsensical exhibition of angles, howling, “Hey, look at how many angles I’ve got!” It does nothing for the story. I was eager for the end credits by the fourth minute, it doesn’t get worse than this.