by Akinwande Jordan
You’ll be hard-pressed to find a more vibrant face on the big screen than Tomi Ojo’s face. It works with no strictures, oscillating from the archetypal ever-perplexed next-door girl in your typical GRA to the occasional flirt who makes eyes at you as a mode of pleasantries exchange. She embodies both archetypes here as Eve in Chapter Ex.
A Savant production (under the auspices of MAVIN Films) —Written by Ayomide Tayo and Ishioma Egba. Directed by Daniel David as a precursor to imminent CHAPTER X album and a loose adaptation of a track on the album above.
Chapter EX takes a novelistic form as it is rendered in chapters ; opening with her somber voice, lamenting about the lost promise of a fairytale and a shot of her sitting in a bathroom visibly perturbed by the positive result on a pregnancy test kit before she makes the final decision to call a certain Candy. Clichés are rejected here— which is often rare as Nigerian films are often eager to belabor a scene with exposition; the distress is shown and sparsely told.
Enter Eve’s significant other — CJ or Chijoke (Deji Osiyoka), suave, soignè and debonair. Perhaps not what you envision when you think about the typical cyber-criminal or “Yahoo boy” as it is colloquially called. We are presented an image of star-crossed lovers —engaged — grappling with a myriad of impediments; Eve’s pregnancy, C.J’s nefarious profession he intends to relinquish after “one last job” at behest of Eve alongside his reluctance to make himself a known entity in Eve’s life.
Each harbouring a secret — CJ’s crew are violently unwilling to grant him an exit. Eve wroughts a plan with Candy to send in ersatz law enforcement to expedite CJ’s process but Candy had her own cold dish of revenge she was eager to serve. Pandemonium ensues.
In a span of eleven minutes and thirty seconds — a crisp mise-en-scene is painted. Every composition utilised in two locations is pronounced with sufficient lighting, giving way for proportional subtlety and tension. Though the denouement requires a total hyper-suspension of disbelief to conceive of the double-cross and twists that make up the resolution.
The overall ambiance almost evokes the need for an Africa magic original movies redux — it befits that era of incontinent creativity spawning from a small-budget. Thematically, the chief trope is the karmic zest that punctuates the film. In and of itself, the trope has no fault line but it can make a (short) film feel overly didactic, obfuscating character ambiguity and any room for an audience to glean their own lessons.
To a great degree, CHAPTER EX sets itself up as a precursor to a feature film. It packs a punch but perhaps it might pack a more substantial punch if protracted and given the feature treatment. Daniel David shows why he’s fast becoming a visual staple and thus he seems capable of helming the director’s seat for a feature film if the screenplay is fleshed out to the max. Aside from Tomi Ojo, Deji Osiyoka’s performance reminds you of a cavalier roommate with a vicious secret. The skinny girl in transit Alum and voice-over artist makes it abundantly clear that he’s much more than latent potential as he plays CJ with a recognisable Lagos fervour.
Inasmuch as there’s the feeling of more to be added to chapter ex for a definitive story, as a short film it still demands the bulk of your attention.
