Dear Dianne

Technically, Dear Dianne is a movie about illness and other technical things that come with it. It’s the air that surrounds every agenda in this film, however, that’s not the focus. The focus is on relationships and not relationships like we expect – it’s the story of the love between a mother and her child.

Dear Dianne tells the story of Dianne (Sandra Okunzuwa), a young married lady, with a chronic health issue that masks everything she does. Going against medical advice, she takes the decision to have a child and her mother fights her on this. Her mother (Jennifer Eliogu) is scared of loosing the child that she has fought so hard to raise, and the movie follows this tussle between mother and child till the end of the film.

Looking at the story alone, it does a good job of never allowing the push and pull of the conflict to get redundant or tiring. The other aspects of the story like the mother’s love interest, Dianne’s husband’s dilemma etc. serve an important role in giving the film and its characters some deeper tones and it never takes away from the main focus of the film – which is the mother and daughter dynamics. The real gem of the movie is in the little moments shared between these two. It’s when they share a plate of nkwobi, it’s when they go wedding dress shopping, it’s when they have honest conversations in the bedroom.

The star of this film is in its shading of relationships, but before you get to the star you have to make it through the clouds. And the beauty of this film is clouded by little things like over dramatic performances, over dramatic music and poorly thought out props. Sandra Okunzuwa plays the titular role here and while her performance isn’t the worst thing we’ve ever seen, it’s also full of many holes. There are many scenes where she is Toyin Abrahaming her way through. She is stretching things, she is over-dramatizing, and just all round being quite melodramatic when less could have achieved more. Sandra’s mishaps aren’t as glaring though because she is in good company with the effortless Jennifer Eliogu. This was a role that required a balance of youth and age, and Eliogu brought it in the classy way that only she can. As far as the rest of the performances go, Monjaro and Touitou weren’t given enough meat for them to elevate or destroy the film and that served us all well. And for some reason Emeka Okoro came off as the most unenergetic human to have ever graced the planet in his uninspired performance here. 

All that being said, it’s easy to overlook all the flaws because the story is properly developed enough to grip you from start to finish. And if not for anything, watch this for that heart wrenching performance from Eliogu in the second to last scene of the movie.