Two films premiered-Bursting Out and Holding Hope
By Olushola Ojikutu
August 23, 2010 01:48PM
Holding Hope and Bursting Out
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.
Two films and a premiere