An enjoyable no-frills story from director Kayode Kasum about a single mother seeking career breakthrough amidst familial strife.
This Lady Called Life, directed by Kayode Kasum, has an uncanny title, and it’s one of the first things that you think about this film. We learn the heroine’s name is Aiye, the Yoruba word for life and things aren’t so strange after all. Aiye, through this film, is broken by a man, misunderstood by a woman (her mother), and aided to self-realisation by another man.
The first time we meet Aiye, we see she’s the type who keeps her feelings bottled up. Rather than air her grievance, she leaves it unsaid, settling for imagining scenarios where she actually speaks her mind. The sequences where she does this are so well acted and shot. It also happens frequently and you are certain that, at a crucial point of the story, she will tire of the mental scenarios and actually give vent to her discontent. When it does eventually happen, it brings the story to its emotional climax.
In the opening scenes, Aiye begs a reluctant woman to babysit her son while she goes to write an important exam. If passed, this exam will aid her quest to become a high-profile chef. One wonders where the father of her child is, or why she can’t take her child to her family. The answer to that comes soon in the form of Tina Mba, who plays Aiye’s cantankerous mother.
Aiye’s mother is easily wronged and shows no restraint as she heaps verbal abuse on even her own children. Now we know why Aiye keeps her distance.
But a medical emergency forces Aiye to abandon her exam midway and trot off to a hospital. Her mother collapsed, her father tells her, and will need to be cared for. Aiye’s father and sister are unavailable to provide that care. So it falls to Aiye, who, after a brief protest with her father, finally decides to move to her parents’ home in order to help her mother.
It is not every time that you see a Nollywood film pit a mother against her daughter. This film does so and you are keen on finding out what bred the discord between mother and child. When the revelation is eventually made, it proves worthy of the wait.
Fate brings Aiye to Obinna, a photographer who falls in love first with her cooking, then with her, and doesn’t mind that she is a single mother. He uses his leverage to secure her a spot in a chef audition, leading to the film’s second most glorious moment. Aiye, initially hesitant in front of the judges, proceeds to dazzle. Her self-doubt, projected adequately by Aiyeola’s acting, peels away in this scene.
The first most glorious scene, expectedly, involves Aiye and her mother. The acting is so well done, and the reason the two of them don’t get along, when eventually divulged, creates on Mba’s face, the realisation, in its purest form, that a mother would have on discovering that she has failed in her primary duty as a parent, which is to understand her child.
There never was much at stake between Aiye and Obinna. The story, in fact, is barely about them. Even when a love interest from Obinna’s past causes a small rift between the two budding lovers, it is not a rift you expect to last for long.
This is not a film with grand twists. Its intentions are minimalist, and its plot, linearly crafted, holds no surprises. It thrives on its simplicity and how well it follows its heroine as she goes from a hapless single mother to getting her well-deserved triumph.