Eyimofe
Starring Jude Akuwudike, Temi Ami-Williams
Directed by Arie Esiri and Chuko Esiri
Rating: *** ½
Eyimofe means, ‘This Is My Desire’ in Nigerian. The evocative deceptively loose-limbed film which opened the Berlin Film Festival in 2020 is a masterclass in how to open raw wounds until they never heal.
This is a film that chokes on its vomit,regurgitating the despair of poverty with such vehemence , it’s like being hit by a shower of mud and shit as a passing car splashes into a puddle on a passerby.
The squalor and stench of lowlife in Lagos hits you from the first frame as we meet Mofe(Jude Akuwudike). There is nothing to keep Mofe in his home country. He is readying himself for a life in Spain, passport, visa, startup money and all, when tragedy strikes. Mofe’s entire family is wiped out one night as they sleep in their dingy chawl room.
“Generator fumes,” we later come to know. Not that it matters how the tragedy happened. This is a society so habituated to crisis it immediately weighs the practicalities of the situation rather than crying over spilt milk.Who can afford to spill milk here?
Mofe is an electrician. He is holding a job that his protégé is waiting to take.
There is very little time for sentimentality in the dry-eyed tragedy of a world where dreams are a ridiculous luxury. The ruthless screenplay slices Mofe’s aspirations into half…and then we meet Rosa (Temi Ami-Williams) who wants to earn a better life for her sister and self. But where are the opportunities?
It’s not so much poverty as a lack of opportunities that assail our senses as we are pushed into the lives of Mofe and Rosa who make up the two halves of this hellhole tale. And yes, they are connected. Rosa in pursuit of a secure future is Mofe’s mistress, or ‘girlfriend’ if you will, although there is nothing even remotely romantic about the equation that the two delelict emotional vagabonds share: she needs, he provides.
Rosa’s undignified desperation is sharply etched in her relationship with a kindhearted American whom she befriends and exploits financially. The relationship is heartbreaking in its impecunious intimacy. In a society based on inequality all relationships are founded on the giver-taker equations.
It’s simple. It’s ruthless. It’s finally a kind of death for all dreams.Eyimofe doesn’t leave us with any hope for Mofe or Rosa. The way the co-directors brothers Arie Esiri and Chuko Esiri see it, there is only one way out of the hell-hole. Generator fumes.
The actors are all so natural we feel like intruders sharing their lives. With no external props, no roadmapping via a background score, Eyimofe plunges us deep into these dark desperate lives. No false hopes here. What we see is what we get.Or don’t get. Depending on which side you are dreaming from.
