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Two movies,
‘Holding Hope’ and ‘Bursting Out’ were premiered on August 8 at the
Silverbird Cinemas, Victoria Island. The premieres recorded a large
attendance of Nollywood actors, actresses and film makers, who came out
to support the stars and producers of the movies.

‘Bursting Out’,
starring Genevieve Nnaji and Ghanaian actor Majid Michael, was produced
by Emem Isong and directed by Desmond Elliot and Daniel Ademinokan.
Nnaji, caught for a brief interview on the red-carpet, gave NEXT a hint
of what to expect from ‘Bursting Out’. “It is a lovely story with
romance and suspense, a beautiful love story. You will see me in the
same role I have often played – a woman looking for love.”

Uche Jombo
expressed similar sentiments for ‘Holding Hope’, which she jointly
produced with Isong and Elliot. “If I could cut my hair for one scene,
then that should tell you how powerful the story is. Hope (the
character she plays) has an inner strength that I admire. The movie is
about faith, hope and about how we cannot change the things we cannot
change.”

All Isong would
say was: “‘Bursting Out’ is a fun kind of movie, while ‘Holding Hope’
is an intense [film] about cancer. Just come in and watch, I’m sure you
will have a good time.”

Deja vu

However, the
movies, sadly, proved to be not much better than the mean ‘Iweka Road’
offerings. We have all seen ‘Bursting Out’ before; we have seen it in
every story where rich girl meets poor boy and has problems getting
convinced that his ghetto background is good enough for her. We saw it
more recently in ‘Silent Scandals’, by producer Vivian Ejike, which
also stars Nnaji and Majid together.

Much as one may
have tried to find something to recommend about the movie, one would be
hard pressed to find any. I’ll settle instead for the easy camaraderie
that was achieved between Zara (Nnaji), Ini (Omoni Oboli) and Tina (Nse
Nkpe Etim). It is in scenes with the three of them that one derives
some form of entertainment, as they satirise the Nigerian aso-ebi
practice, “Burgundy dresses, Prada bags, Jimmy Choos, Gold gele”; and
disparage Zara’s love interest Tyrone, a mail dispatcher, with lines
such as: “This is so cute, you perched behind him (on his motorcycle)
riding away to a honeymoon”, “if we knew he was buying, we could have
gotten a cheaper restaurant so that at least he could buy water.”

My complaints are
however many: the party scene was lacklustre, the audience knows that
is not what a classy Nigerian party looks like; the big screen was not
friendly to the movie, as some of the motion was blurry. As for the
sets – come on, that office of Zara’s was so domestic it could have
been a tabby cat; That ex-girlfriend did act quite well, but was she
relevant to the plot? And if so, why was Tyrone suddenly rid of her?
Finally, one might need someone to explain those black and white scenes
as they obviously were not flashbacks.

Excruciating

Ending with
Tyrone, striking it rich by getting admitted to a foreign football
club; and his proposing to Zara after scoring a goal in a match at a
Nigerian stadium, ‘Bursting Out’ could have been better. While,
however, ‘Bursting Out’ was un-original and uninspiring, ‘Holding Hope’
with its cancer theme was quite frankly excruciating (and not just for
its terminal cancer sufferers). By the time the movie was halfway, the
cinema hall had been cleared of half of the viewers who had struggled
to get in.

Holding Hope tells
the story of Olumide (Desmond Elliot), a rich irresponsible
spendthrift, who though set to inherit a thriving business from his
mother, does not possess the acumen to keep it so. His mother
recognising his limitations, brings Hope (a lady we guess she met
through her cancer support society) forward to manage the financial
affairs of the company. The mother does not hide her hopes that Olumide
and Hope will end up together. And she gets her wish after she declares
that she is dying of cancer.

We think Hope and
Olumide might sail to blissful matrimony or that in the course of the
movie, we will find that the marriage is a sham; but the movie denies
us such meaningful conclusions. It exasperates us instead with several
contradictions: Olumide’s girlfriend (Nadia Buari) apparently thinking
he married Hope to secure his inheritance, approaches him after his
mother’s burial, only to be told that he’s in love with his wife – a
wife whom he begins to mistreat immediately after his mother’s will
requires that there be no divorce between them.

So much does
Olumide abuse Hope that we see her as an epitome of the saint
stereotype. Emem herself had at a recent film forum described a
‘Nollywood saint’ as: a person who is continually maltreated by a
boyfriend or a husband but who fails to take any constructive action
regarding the problem. Hope bears for a full hour the many injustices
her husband deems to throw at her – verbal, physical and emotional; and
then moans tearfully, “I heard you, you said you loved me; you said the
sun and the moon slept at my feet”.

After a number of
scenes the audience begins to have a hard time making sense of the
movie – In one scene Hope is chocking on her own blood, in the next she
is drowning in a pool then is quickly rescued by her husband, who
incidentally, is again suddenly in love with her. Finally, one day she
declares, “I am dying, I have leukemia, by which time the audience
thinks: come on, not everyone involved in supporting cancer research
falls ill with the disease!

Perhaps the only
redeeming factor of the movie is that we are offered no religious
placebos, a road often easily taken in other Nigerian films. The
delivery of the actors can also not be faulted, especially Buari’s.

However, the sequence of scenes need to be re-examined before the
movie makes a cinema run. The length also is unnecessary, and the pace
too slow – especially after Hope’s diagnosis. Conclusion: A passable
home video (for those who enjoy a healthy dose of human misery); but
certainly not one worthy of the big screen.