In Sickness and Health

THIS REVIEW MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS

In Sickness and Health poses as a certain type of movie and delivers as another movie. Maybe not a whole other movie, but way more than you initially expect it to be after seeing the cover or reading the synopsis. The movie is about a young couple who start to have problems a few years into their marriage when the husband, Priye, begins to be physically abusive to the wife, Tinuke.

In Sickness and Health is a different movie because it is not the nollywood domestic abuse formula. Even I found myself in the initial parts of the movie looking forward to the usual formula. After he hit her, I started to yell “girl pack up your bags”. After he took from her money, I started to scream “olodo, are you waiting for him to bankrupt you?”. When he made excuses, I watched her face for signs that she had fallen for it. But she hadn’t, or had she?

The characters here, unlike our usual nollywood movies, aren’t black or white. They have shades of grey. They don’t make decisions like our usual nollywood characters, and on some level that’s definitely worth applauding. When he beats her up she doesn’t say “it makes me sad or it hurts me”, she says “it makes me feel weak”. So what does she do? She learns self defense. When she gets there and her instructor is the chocolate god himself – Mawuli Gavor – we expect her to leave her husband and go to him, but she doesn’t. She still limps back home. After she exacts her vengeance on her husband’s face we expect the movie to be over. Any other nollywood movie would be over here but instead she goes and sits with him at the hospital with her bruised up her hands. She meets a Nigerian doctor that doesn’t scream at her and call her a witch for beating up her own husband. Instead, he recommends counseling! It was at this point I realized that the writer was not writing a nollywood movie.

And before we move on can we talk about the lines of dialogue. Especially in the feet washing scene. Something about the combo of Aluko’s lines and Ukeje’s rendition melted all hearts such that when Naya’s character stood up to leave, even though you realize the levity of the situation, you kind of want to pull her by the ear and force her to sit down.

And then they were the performances. Without question Ukeje is on a different level from the rest of us peasants. We might forget it occasionally but then his performance in movies like these serve to remind us. From his Mr. Lova Lova that might have you imagining you’re the one he’s romancing, to his rapist moments that scare you from within, O.C brought the action. I will say though, that there was room for more than he gave but he gave more than most do. Beverly Naya as Tinuke matched him in most scenes but we will be remiss not to realize that Ukeje carried much of this movie. Hats off to Meg Otanwa for that scene in the living room where she showed us how to balance fire and craze as an actress without sounding grating.

The movie was obviously not without its flaws. Some of the most obvious were production and direction wise. There were scenes in the beginning of the movie where the lighting on Ukeje’s face was none existent in scenes were Naya’s face had no problems. Then there was the directing in that “action” scene where Beverly beats up O.C. Needless to say, we need to do better about directing action scenes.

If someone gets to the end of this movie and they tell you that they know the right answer or the right path that any of the characters should have gone down, tell them to go and re-watch the movie because they have missed the point. The story here, nay the hidden messages here is the originality of this “other domestic abuse story”. I am Christian but I won’t claim that the moral is to come to Christ. I am feminist and I won’t claim that the moral is that women should be empowered. I am a firm advocate of mental health but I won’t claim that the moral of the story is to promote seeking therapy. It is not all of these. It is not none of these. It is more than that and it is nothing. It is not here to tell you what to do or to proffer any solutions. It simply starts conversations.