Before Valentine’s

Before Sugar first appears at the high-brow hair salon where she works, her name is mentioned a number of times. First by Ola (Yvonne Jegede), a regular at the salon who wants only her to do her hair. Next by Ama (Venita Akpofure of BBN), who is a new customer at the salon that sees Tamara (Meg Otanwa) and mistakes her for Sugar. Then by Philo (Ben Touitou), the effeminate coworker who goes: “When you see Sugar you’ll know, she’s crazy”. And finally by real life Shaffy Bello, who wants to have her hair done and leaves because Sugar is not there yet and no one else touches her hair. 

All this builds anticipation for who we can assume will be the main character of Before Valentine’s, a very good hairdresser and an over-the-top personality. If all of that paints a picture for you, it’s probably from Funke Akindele of Jenifa’s Diary. But Sugar is very different, while still fitting into that description, she is a lot more refined. She leads an ensemble cast consisting of four workers of the salon—herself, Tamara, Philo and the overly religious Chika (played by Bolaji Ogunmola), and she winds up taking up most of the storyline. The day is February 13th and love is in the air. Each member of the cast navigates their love life ahead of Valentine’s day, and these appear pretty straightforward at first—Tamara has the dream husband who is both wealthy and buff, Chika is in a serious relationship with a man that matches her religious ideals, Philo is in a stable long distance relationship.

Sugar herself has no definite match, but not for a lack of options. She is attractive enough to have the eyes of several men, especially the persistent Max (Shawn Faqua), who comes to see her at the salon everyday, not minding that she hardly reciprocates these efforts. But she is also confident enough to know the pull her beauty carries, so she will not settle for anything less than perfect. That perfection, to her, is Farouq (Tope Adebuniyan or BBN’s Teddy A) who works next door, so she is torn between the man who really loves her and the one who hardly cares, and if you’ve seen a movie like this before (and you probably have), you can guess which one she settles for.

It would have been nice if this was the extent of the premise of Before Valentine’s—trying to find a match for its main characters in the 24 hours before the day. That is, afterall, what its name suggests. But Nigerian comedies do this thing where they try to pass a lesson, so you get a shock when a silly movie that made you laugh for an hour suddenly remembers it wants to get serious. Having done a good job handling all the drama from the salon for the first two-thirds of the movie, the writers (Nicolette Ndigwe, Diche Enunwa and Temitope Bolade-Akinbode) think it wise to take things outside through a subplot involving Sugar’s family.

To further burden the plot and stretch the runtime, they try to give a conclusive end to all of the rest of its major characters, when it should have been obvious Sugar’s story would have sufficed on its own. The others are the supporting cast, after all, and I doubt anyone would have complained if they didn’t get completely perfect arcs to their stories. Acting is above average across board, but it appears our cast members spent so long watching the American films they were given to prepare for this movie, because they come out with a variety of accents, sometimes American, sometimes Black American, other times almost English—and all these might be shuffled by the same person. 

Nigerian English is a recognised variant of the language, and it is annoying when our actors abandon it in movies, especially because it is what we actually speak. Uche Nwaefuna’s American accent is at least consistent, and it is another way she emerges as the best performer of the ensemble. She is in her element when she is swatting affection from Max and sharing gossip with her co-workers, less so when she has to act in emotional scenes of the movie’s third act. Bolaji Ogunmola also deserves credit for embodying her role as the overly righteous christian, but the producers need some knocks for hampering the realism of her performances. One second she is making the sign of the cross, like a Catholic; the next she is revealed to have a pastor, more like a Pentecostal.

For Ben Touitou’s performance as Philo, one is torn between according praise to the actor for a decent effort as the overly-effeminate man and blame to the writers that the role even exists. Did they really have to copy every bit of American-isms? Max, the most important character outside the salon, is not well handled by Shawn, so although he was written to be the genuinely caring lover, he comes off more as a persistent stalker. There is little incentive for the audience to support his pursuit of Sugar except that they were always going to end up together as the male and female leads.

For some reason there is hardly any music at all in Before Valentine’s, and there were many scenes, especially the romantic ones, that could have used it. Before Valentine’s excels as a comedy, driven by tight writing and good chemistry shared by our cast members in the salon. As a romantic film it works fine, although the writers could have had Max and Sugar share a few intimate scenes before the final one. As a serious drama, though, in the last thirty minutes, there are too many twists introduced and not enough time to make the audience care about all of them. Still, it would make a fair addition to any Valentine’s day movie collection, if you keep one.