Within Me

The “Ruth Kadiri” approach truly warrants examination at some point, as it consistently evokes intended emotions from the audience through a blend of unoriginal storytelling, predictable writing, manipulative music, and questionable acting skills. “Within Me” perfectly exemplifies this.

Craig (Chidi Dike) is planning to go off to Canada to continue his education when Ella (Stefania Bassey) and her mother come knocking on his parents door. They claim that Ella is pregnant for him and Craig, seeing the potential disruption to his ‘japa’ plans, vehemently denies this. While Craig’s mother takes his side immediately, his father is more cautious. So when Ella comes back a day or two later after being kicked out by her mother for refusing an abortion, Craig’s father takes her in.

There are story elements here that will never sit well with the learned observer. First and foremost, the writers could have done a better job to explain why Ella’s character refuses the abortion. Yes, there was an offhand scene of her and Craig in the car being silly lovebirds but surely she must have known that the toil of carrying a pregnancy at her age is beyond that – especially after the young man has denied her. Also in the face of losing her opportunity to go study in America, the off-hand decision about something that major surely required a little bit more script and screen time to make it make sense.

A good thing about these Ruth Kadiri productions are how she gives opportunities to new talents. Ella who is played by Stefania Bassey and Craig who is played by Chidi Dike are both relatively new to the screens. And thankfully so, because for once in a nollywood movie, actors that are supposed to play characters in their late teens and early twenties look the part. However, as far as acting chops go, these two still have a ways to go on the journey. Almost like everyone else in this film did.

At the end of the movie, sense suddenly falls on all the characters that require sense at the most convenient time and if it was any other film we would require more explanation, but nothing thus far had been explained too much so asking for that now would be a reach. One of the best things though about Ruth’s films is that she always compensates the viewers for the numerous scenes of suffering they had to watch with just enough scenes of the ‘happily ever after’ bits to satiate.

Despite all its inadequacies and the many plot elements that we could have seen coming from a mile away, at the end of this you might find yourself actually shedding tears alongside the characters when the end credits roll.

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