Oche’s Secret

Oche’s Secret tries to pull at your heart string with that old school love kind of romance. It even pulls in some old nollywood actors – Chiege Alisigwe – and starts off with a scene of an older married couple still doing tingo tingo in their daily lives. Really, the only thing missing for these two is a tree for them to be running around while some squeaky voiced, C note aspiring singer sings a song in Igbo that tells the whole story.

It’s wholesome. It’s cute. It’s sweet. And that’s how we know that a 100% of the target audience will not care about 100% of the flaws that we may find in this movie, but yet we move. The film starts off as a sweet story of this small family unit up until the wife, Oche’s childhood friend shows up with her daughter and dredges up old secrets.

The story in itself is fleshy enough to keep it going, the problem is all the moving parts that are attached to it might make it difficult to watch. To start off with, there’s a grand total of zero actors in this movie. Okay, maybe two – in the persons of the younger Oche and the younger Ejuwa. Asides from these two, anyone watching this must be prepared to endure nearly two whole hours of recited lines and attempts to look a part with little to no conviction. Chiege Alisigwe’s presence in this film brings up nostalgic feelings of nollywood of yore, but from her first few lines in the movie you are also quickly reminded why you forgot about her.

Then there is the production and direction. The film generally manages to retain that feeling you’d hope to have while watching a period piece. The setting and costumes are appropriate, the mood throughout is convincing, the music helps to move the story along without revealing the entire plot. However, the editing in some scenes where we are fast-forwarding a romantic moment that is set to slow music is confusing, the camera action where it seems like the camera is placed on a moving camel for some shots is distressing, and woe be tide you if you actually try to make sense of the ankara prints used and how those would have been obtained in those times.

Credit must be given though to the writer and the director: the writer for managing to string together this story that depends on a lot of flashbacks without ever loosing the focus of the plot, and to the director for managing to convey that to the screen without it becoming scattered. Oche’s Secret, best case scenario, is a movie best appreciated while playing in the background. Don’t pause it to get up, you won’t miss anything when you get back.