The Great Nigerian Films, No. 6: The Bling Lagosians Review

PG-13+, 97 m., 2019. Starring Genga Titiloye, Elvina Ibru, Osas Ighodaro, Sharon Ooja, Tana Adelana, Jimmy Odunkoya, Alexx Ekubo. Dir. Bolanle Austen-Peters. Scr. by Anthony Kehinde Joseph. Prod. by Bolanle Austen-Peters.

A Nollywood screenwriter presents her newly-developed screenplay to a Nollywood marketer in his office. The marketer thinks the screenplay is fine as it is. But he has suggestions on how to thicken the plot. (“This your soup, it is sweet already o. But there’s a small ingredient we will just add, you know, to thicken the plot.”) The writer, giddy and jumpy, picks up a note and listens. First the marketer wants the king of the script to have two idiotic sons: Aki and Pawpaw. Then he wants Mr Ibu to play the village palm wine tapper. And he’ll like Mama G as a perpetual beggar. An argument ensues.

“No, this is a revenge thriller. Not a slapstick with village actors,” the writer says. “By the time these guys go in, that is exactly what it’s going to become.”

“Nne, we need to put comedy,” says the marketer. “People need to laugh. The country is hard.”

“It needs an element of comedy. It should not become comedy,” says the writer. Then a pause.

This is almost fifty minutes into Bolanle Austen-Peters’ directorial debut The Bling Lagosians. The film is about the wealthy Holloway family of Lagos. As the film opens we see Baba Eko play a game of tennis and die afterwards. Baba Eko is the godfather to the Holloways patriarch, Akin Holloway (Gbenga Titiloye). He’s the one who’s been buying Akin time and rescue from Asset Management Corporation of Nigeria, which will foreclose the bankrupt family business, St. Ives. Now Akin has to handle AMCON without Baba Eko. Or he’ll have to service the family debts. Plus he and the family have to lay low, underspending. Meanwhile his wife, the Holloways matriarch, Mopelola (Elvina Ibru), wants to throw a talk-of-the-city 51st birthday after a lavish, top-ranked 50th birthday party the previous year.

As the story unfolds further we see that the family is also facing internal qualms. The two daughters of the Holloways have chosen career paths different from what their parents want for them. Demidun (Osas Ighodaro), the first child, who’s married to an estranged husband of a pilot, is practicing as a marriage counselor despite holding an MBA. Tokunbo (Sharon Ooja), an Oxford-trained lawyer, wants to be the biggest Nollywood screenwriter. She’s the screenwriter arguing with the film marketer (Alexx Ekubo) above. And Mope, their mother, must fight off backbiting, competitive, mocking hypocritical friends. And Akin, he has to keep his affair with the wife of a friend and colleague a secret.

This is more than enough drama in a film. Plus there’s little romance unspooling as a subplot.

But then the argument between Tokunbo and the marketer has always for me been a comment on the movie itself. And perhaps the rest of Nollywood. This film is comedy, has elements of comedy, but isn’t a village slapstick. It is comedy because of how it ends. It is because it emphasizes humor. It teases laughs out of even serious incidents without demeaning them. It sketches fine caricatures. One of such, Dunni Fanendez, played by Toyin Abraham, is a joy to watch throughout the film. This is for me one of two or three of her best roles and best performances yet.

The 2006 American Dreamz writer-director Paul Weitz once, in an interview, said of his film, “Satire is what closes on Saturday nights. So it’s comedy.” Bolanle, too, could say of hers. But Bling is drama, comedy, and satire. It is satire for it’s a social critique of class, friendship, career, public image, the business world, etc. Actually it is satire and the sum of satire, comedy, and drama especially for its pace. The pace quickens during the comic parts and slows during the sadder chunks. The quicker the transition of a scene, say, the lighter the mood, and the slower the transition of the same the heavier the mood. Of course both moods weigh heavily in the development of the story and the deepening of the conflict. The use of pauses and beats, too. Take the pause by the Holloways’ house workers while praying to God to make their bosses pay them. Coupled by the use of light and shadows, the former for the more light-hearted shots and scenes, the latter usually signaling weightier stuff, the filmmakers have indeed achieved a blend of genres mostly via editing and cinematography. This isn’t an achievement unique to the film. But it becomes in the sure hands of a debutant director like Bolanle part of the story itself.

And what makes this story a story, what shapes the genres tying into a story, is the people of the film. We like stories because we like interesting people. And for the characters of a film to be interesting at least three aspects must complement each other. Writing, directing, acting. The script must sketch real characters. Their decisions should be those we might make and their motives those we might acquire if in their situations. The cast must get the roles they could kill. And kill them. And the director should cull out uncluttered performances from her cast. If the story Bling tells is interesting because it shows interesting people, then all three parts align. 

Since 2019, the year she debuted as a director, Bolanle Austen-Peters has made five feature films, each addressing a social, political or historical issue. House of Ga’a (2024), a historical epic, recounts the story of a power-drunk generalissimo of the old Oyo empire. Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti (2022) tells the story of one of the women who more than contributed to women and human rights movements in early Nigeria. A Man of God (2021) comments on the commercialization of megachurches in Nigeria. Collision Course (2020) takes on the travails of the Nigerian youths in the hands of the police and the police’s in the hands of the government. 

These films of her own are not different from her earlier projects. Before directing films, she’s had an acclaimed career directing plays at the Terra Kulture, the arts and culture center in Lagos, which she founded and acts as its artistic director. One such play is the 2016 musical Fela and the Kalakuta Queens. There, she highlights the lives of the women surrounding Fela, whose story is little known. She also produced in 2015 93 Days, a film recounting the Ebola outbreak in Lagos. But Bling is the movie that telecast on the big screen her vision to us. It’s a funny exposé of the lives of the Lagos elites, the one percent of the one percent. A social study, a clean comedy. It’s the film hardest to fault in Bolanle’s oeuvre. But it’s not just a career strong start. This is Nollywood being ferociously entertaining without losing too much hold on artistic focus. Low art aiming high. Or vice versa. Comedy that refuses to lower itself into slapstick. Here’s a film to enjoy at the front row on a cold Friday in the wrap of a lover’s arms, their armpit smelling of sweetness and love.

The Great Nigerian Films (TGNF) are a collection of my favourite Nigerian movies in no particular order. My criterion is the quality of a film. But I'm likely to pick a so-so film that is vital to film development and studies in the country. These films are both a primer and a companion to Nollywood. And this is a work of documenting and archiving.