Keeping Secret

What’s that they say? “Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice and shame on me?” Apparently all the shame is on me for this one because at this point the number of times I have been fooled is definitely in the triple digits.

Keeping Secret is the story of an elderly woman, played by Ebele Okaro, who is married to a younger man, played by Frederick Leonard. She soon discovers that her time on earth might be drawing to an end so she sends her husband on a mission to find her long lost daughter. It is at this point that the drama begins to unfold.

Truth be told, for some reason or the other, I was really hoping that this one was different. I was hoping and praying that in some phantasmal twist, this time the story would be that he really loved her and that he was not in fact just an obvious gold digger. In summary, I was hoping and praying for a ‘different’ storyline. But what did it end up being? The same old storyline.

One thing that this movie does differently, from the millions of other Van Vicker, Ramsey Nouah and Pat Attah versions of the film, is that it starts in the crux of the storyline. You don’t have to sit through part 1 and 2 for the handsome lover/trifling golddigger/sugar son to meet her, make her fall for him and then marry him. It gets straight to business and for that we are grateful.

The standout performance in this movie was definitely from Ebere Okaro especially in the scene where she narrates the story of how she lost her daughter. Altogether, it was a fair performance from all cast members even though sometimes I could not understand which accent Frederick Leonard was channeling. Side note: am I the only one that gets Biola Ige vibes from Peggy Ovire?

At the end of it all, keeping secrets is a fair watch. It just incites a lot of hope that it is a different type of movie, especially in the beginning; all these, however, were expectations that were never met.