If Isoken was Jade Osiberu’s take on the romantic comedy, Christmas In Lagos is her holiday movie. Both are modelled on mainstream Hollywood genres—a detail which imbues both films with a crowdpleasing familiarity but also throws up the tricky thing about Osiberu undeniable talent. We’ll get back to this.
The film’s story is a triangle of near-perfect love triangles. There’s Fiyin, a young woman in love with Elo, a childhood friend who has eyes (seemingly) just for Yagazie (Angel Anosike). There’s Ivie (Rayxia Ojo), who becomes interested in a guitar-playing dude from the other (less-wealthy) side of town. Then there’s Gbemi (Shaffy Bello), an older woman courted by a former lover (RMD) while in a relationship with another man (Wale Ojo).
Fiyin is the film’s focal point. She is Ivie’s cousin and daughter to Gbemi. Her storyline gulps the most screentime and forms the backbone of the film’s climax. As played by Teniola Aladese, she is playful and fun. In true Osiberu style, she’s attractive. All of the performers are attractive in this film. Ditto the landscape. It’s always been the case that holiday flicks, and maybe even holidays, aren’t the purview of the less than stunning. Nothing bad with that. Except that the casting of beautiful people in beautiful places forces a reconsideration of the film’s title.
Efiko Score: 5.9/10. With Christmas In Lagos, a major Nollywood talent makes a minor film.
Not the “Christmas” bit. The “Lagos” portion. It’s not a particularly stunning city—as its residents would tell you. Parts of it are, though, so this is a film that should probably be renamed Christmas In Swanky Lagos. But nobody comes to holiday movies for kitchen sink realism. The Lagos here is a tourist attraction, a cinematic representation of what the relatively monied UK/US “Detty December” crew hope to find when they show up in the city at the end of the year. The trick, as experienced heads will tell you, is to flee before the reality of Lagos catches up with you.
By design, that reality never catches up with the film. Whatever conflicts arise, and they do arise in Fiyin’s life, you know they’ll be overcome. In that broadly predictable regard, and its quite colourful palette, Christmas in Lagos is similar to Isoken. Which brings us to the aforementioned hacked-from-Hollywood texture of both films and what that says about their director’s work.
By any serious account, Osiberu is one of New Nollywood’s shining stars behind the camera. As with many of her colleagues—from Kenneth Gyang to Kemi Adetiba to CJ Obasi—you can tell that she has seen a lot of films in her youth and in some ways her directorial work is a homage to the sensibility those films gave her. But where the best of her peers mask their inspirations, sometimes in clever ways, Osiberu remains obviously indebted to hers.
Anyone familiar with the modern romcom can tell that the person behind Christmas In Lagos and Isoken has surely seen Love, Actually, My Best Friend’s Wedding, and other masterworks of the genre well-known to the film-loving millennial. Her brilliance lies in how well she rises above Nollywood’s manifold copycat mediocrities.
In commercial terms, this is a plus as millennials in the audience share the memory of those films. It is limiting, too, as it always is when a filmmaker is working with a known formular. In the case of both films, it’s easy to see that the story’s conclusion will hew closely to the genre’s happiness-at-all-cost dimensions. Indeed, the one time Osiberu directed a film with a less than apparent progenitor, she made her masterpiece, The Trade. Hopefully, she goes back to draw from that well soon. Christmas In Lagos should please her many fans but it is decidedly a minor work from a major talent.
