Obsession

Do you remember watching that 2009 Beyonce Knowles and Idris Elba starrer called Obsessed? Or at the least do you remember listening in awe to the lyrics of Mariah Carey’s 2009 song Obsessed“? With those works, you really get the feeling of true obsession on the part of the antagonist; however, after watching this movie for 77 minutes I’m not sure that the word “obsession” had much home in this.

Obsessed follows two couples each with one sex deprived spouse and one workaholic spouse. In the relationship between Tricia Davis (Judith Audu) and Bayo Davis (Yemi Blaq), Tricia is a work obsessed wife while her husband (who is also a famous actor) spends most of his time at home looking after their son. This is until Tricia decides to get the assistance of a nanny who just happens to be an obsessive fan of Bayo’s. Then there is the relationship between Tega Umukoro (Femi Branch) and Ene Umukoro (Odera Olivia Orji). In this relationship Tega is the workaholic and his wife, who also works, is constantly feeling deprived. This is until she meets a fine young man, played by Mawuli Gavor, at a bar one night.

Now even though both stories try to convince you that the third party becomes obsessive about their love interest, only one of them is actually anywhere near obsessive and that’s the character of Aret (Ifu Ennada). Her character got the needed time to build up her back story of obsession but when it came to true execution, all we saw was one shoddy scene involving too few clothes and an inexplicable weapon. Having said that, Ifu Ennada does do a swell job of portraying the infatuation within the constraints of the storyline.

The first half of the movie was actually quite commendable with how involved the writer seemed with building the characters’ back stories and with how liberal the film’s approach to sexuality was. It wasn’t necessarily that old school Tonto Dikeh sexuality. It wasn’t crudity for the sake of crudity. It was just a lot more open dialogue about sex and the things involved in it without being jarring or crude. It was actually quite ironic that the first half of the movie takes all this time to set up the relationships between the couple and to get us to feel empathy towards these strained relationships, only for us to get to the second half and the focus shifts. From there it is all downhill as we arrive at an unsatisfactory ending that seems more like the writer ran out of ink than any sort of conclusion for anybody.

As far as performances go, most of the actors did a fine enough job apart from Judith Audu as Tricia Davis. Her character always seemed a lot less natural and a bit more forced. This was especially obvious in the scenes where she had to play off of Yemi Blaq because on the one hand there is the fluidity of Blaq juxtaposed with the cantankerous sounds of her lines.

There are a couple shocks to get over in order to like this movie. First and most amazingly, there is the shock of the story: that writing can devolve so quickly from such elevated approaches to a conclusion that is barely deserving of the word. And then finally, there is the shock that someone can cast both Yemi Blaq and Femi Branch and manage to waste both actors. Once you get over these, you might find that the movie is watchable.