Face of Sorrow

I stumbled on Face of Sorrow whilst looking for a family-type movie. It had all the tell-tale signs of potential success in that genre: a family unit, a village champion villain, and a main protagonist girl to cry on cue. I got most of what I was searching for along with most of the problems you would expect.

Face of Sorrow is the story of an extended family unit that consists of two mothers and their children living in poverty in the village. The mothers seek to have their children complete their education but this dream is brought down by constant stumbling blocks. After a while this trend of “a series of unfortunate events” that kept the family from happiness became a bit too ridiculous. After the first go you might think “just your luck”, second go you’re thinking “eya, how sad” but after the third, fourth, fifth? Please show me the babalawo responsible for this.

It was cliched in that ‘sorrow, sorrow, sorrow, then 2 minutes before the end we finally get happiness’ kind of manner, but even at that it could have had more of an emotional pull. There were many points along the line where you thought “ok this is where the storyline is going” and it doesn’t. This is not necessarily a good thing because you get ready for some concrete storyline finally only to find that angle left unexplored. After part one was over and what I will refer to as “the incident” occurred, I thought “alright, this movie is about to go somewhere”. I assumed it would follow the path of that old nollywood movie starring Genevieve and Emeka Ike – called Two Together – where he is her professor and beats her blind and then is forced to marry her. I was excited. That path might have been copycat but it would have had the feeling.

The actors that performed in this movie, for the most part, held their own. There were no outstanding performances because the movie was quite average. It lacked the feeling aspect and it also ended in a very unsatisfactory manner. For one, of course our savior would be a knight in shining armor. We don’t find out what happens in the end we just assume that everyone lives happily ever after.