Lost Pride

My verdict: 4 out of 5

2015 | Drama | 157minutes 42secs | Watch here

You know whenever a Nollywood movie has a title with the word “pride” in it then, virginity is always involved. Some Nigerians tend to think that the pride of a woman correlates with her hymen. I think it has to do more with our culture especially the Igbo / Hausa culture where an intact hymen equates to a higher bride price for the woman’s father and his kinsmen. So, without further ado let’s dive into the synopsis.

A devout Christian girl accepts an offer of a lift from a stranger to escape the rain, but little does she know that his growing obsession with her will lead her jealous coursemate into taking drastic action against her.

I am quite the vindictive person so whenever I see a movie where evil befalls a villain in abundant measure it makes me smile. This movie did just that however, I do believe that Tina’s (Annie Idibia) karma was too little. She needed the exact same if not worse than what Callista (Daniella Okeke) got. Nevertheless, as far as she got her karma, all is well with the world for me.

This movie as already stated was about a girl named Jenny (Belinda Effah) who gets a lift from a stranger Kelvin Madueke (Frederick Leonard). He takes an interest in her and asks for her phone number to which she gives him a fake number. Another girl Callista, sees him and picks an interest in him, however, his unwaivering desire to be with Jenny prompts him to refuse her. This sends her into a rage that eventually consumes her. So for the duration of this movie, we watch Kelvin’s quest to finding Jenny as well as Callista’s elaborate plan to emotionally and physically abuse Jenny.

This movie was well written with most parts fully explained to great detail. Each person in the movie served a purpose, they were not just placed there for no reason or their storyline not correlating with the rest of the movie, which was good to see. I also liked the extreme weakness of the main character Jenny, although her weakness was rather annoying it was good because her weakness pulls you in. We have a girl who instead of fight, cries and those tears start to annoy you when she continues to do it. The annoyance you feel, draws you into the movie because you are now feeling and starting to live vicariously through her by imagining how you’d react in such a situation. This is what I have been begging throughout this week for most of the movies I have been watching. If you want the audience to cry, smile or get pissed when watching a movie, you have to pull them in and this movie pulled me in. We saw how mean these people were, we saw the pain she went through and to that I say well done to the writers and director.

Now, you know nothing is perfect in this world we live in so, I am going to lay it out there for this movie. First was continuity; when Jenny confronted Mark (Mike Godson), why on earth didn’t she tell him that there was evidence of what he did?

Second was the acting; Mike, you no try for this film at all and this is the problem I have with Pascal. He directs the movie but forgets to direct his actors, that is why the consistency of most of the actors in his movies are not maintained. Take Mike Godson for example in this movie. He was meant to be the quintessential Igbo boy with the accent, love for money, women and everything. Mike started off shaky and ended up just being Mike instead of Mark. Pascal needs to always check his actors consistency. Also Annie, (Jesus be an acting coach) so babe, since tey tey you never still improve for this ya acting? She was comical to me because it was like watching my little cousins play mama, papa and doctor. She needs to improve.

Third was HIV, Nollywood needs to stop this HIV is a prostitute’s disease it is peddling because that just makes the stigmatisation sufferers face in real life even worse. Nollywood needs to realise that there are kids who are born with this virus, there are virgins with this virus and there are career prostitutes without this virus. HIV does not give a damn about your lifestyle or age, it is a just a brainless and highly contagious virus that anybody can contract.

Fourth was the abundance of oyinbo names. Just because it was shot in a city does not mean that everybody must have Eurocentric names. We are Nigerians and our movies should have our very Nigerian names.

Lastly the wedding night scene, nobody does that before having sex. All that serenren before straffing, *shaking my head* nope!

This movie does command your attention and to that I say, great job to the crew.

Cast

Eucharia Anunobi as Eunice

Frederick Leonard as Kelvin

Mike Godson as Mark

Belinda Effah as Jenny

Annie Idibia as Tina

Daniella Okeke as Callista

Tana Adelana as Lucia

Daniel K Daniel as Emeka

Tochukwu Okafor as Pat

Directed by

Pascal Amanfo

Written by

Christopher Ozoemena

Screenplay by

Tai Obasi

Produced by

Christopher Ozoemena