Paint My Life

Mental illness in Nigeria is still a taboo subject, still something that is viewed as caused by ‘those in the village’ and still not talked about or addressed. In Nollywood, filmmakers have taken to the subject sometimes successfully and sometimes not. This was one of the unsuccessful ones and I have no idea how it went wrong. The research was done perfectly, and what they said was right and simple enough to understand however what they showed was what let them down.

The plot must have been good on paper but on screen it fell flat. It just wasn’t coming through. The story could have been interesting but it had very low energy tending to turn limp. It wasn’t engaging, and after twenty minutes I had to turn it off because it was just uninspiring and bland.

The two storylines were weak, because they didn’t fit and did not flow together. It seems harsh but the elements of the story and the plot did not gel well. The backgrounds and settings were unimpressive. The characters were stupid and irrational…how can someone owe 4.8 million and be comfortable? The pacing was slow and the portrayal of the mental illness was terrible.

But the biggest failure of the film was Ini Edo. Ini Edo is well known and well-loved for her acting and not once have I seen her deliver less than 100% but here it seemed she was running on 5. Her performance was appallingly bad. It fell flat especially at places where she was meant to excel. She was slow and boring and totally did not commit. Now I didn’t expect ranting and raving or craziness but even in crying scenes she could barely hold it together. What happened? The rest of the actors even Enebuli Elebuwa were so uninspired, so low, so low energy. Only Tonto Dike seemed like she cared about what was going on and she had a very small part.

The production didn’t help at all; it was very harshly lit thus making the actors look dull and lifeless and the settings even worse. The photography was either very tight or very wide so you either felt much distanced from what was going on or claustrophobic. The music was beautiful but they obviously wanted to show it off because it kept coming on randomly and played loudly through scenes. I couldn’t make out what they were saying half the time.

In conclusion, this was a very lacklustre film with dull and uninspired actors and a very badly produced and directed piece. The saddest thing is that the research was done so well and there were obviously good intentions behind it. I cannot recommend it, it just failed