Dear Ajayi

Bluesky

Ade (Bimbo Akintola) and Titi (Tosin Adeyimi) are sisters who live under the same roof in the southern Nigeria of the 1990s while being worlds apart. Family and faith come first for Ade, whose job as a nurse provides the main income for her and her artist husband Michael (William Benson) and children, since he struggles to monetise his work. She’s also the main carer for her ailing mother (Lanre Hassan), since Titi, an aspirational singer, is out most nights singing at the local club Afro Republik, dreaming of a record contract and with no plans to settle down.

Damilola Orimogunje brings this environment to life with vivid texture and a sense of place, as the sisters navigate the day-to-day challenges of their relationship, which becomes increasingly affected by events and, specifically, patriarchal problems.

Orimogunje’s second feature, after For Maria Ebun Patakiin 2020, it is the first Nigerian film to play in Venice’s Giornate degli Autori (previously Venice Days). Light and shade are crucial aspects, not just in terms of the sisters’ distinctive personalities but the way that the film is shot by KC Obiajulu. Sunlight is a key feature of the house that the women inhabit, often dappling in through windows onto the skin of a hand or piece of furniture in lyrical chiaroscuro. At night, deep violets and midnight blues hold sway in the moonlight.

While there is attention to detail in dialogue exchanges, the director also takes care to situate his characters within the landscape. This means he is able to find contrast between scenes around the family home and in the more frenetic city of Lagos, where Michael goes in a bid to find a better market for his work. The sense of place is added to by yet another distinctive score by Ré Olunuga, whose previous work includes Girl and Drift. It is punctuated by needle drops including Ebo Taylor’s Will You Promise and songs, including Nina Simone’s Blackbird, as performed by Titi.

Orimongunje’s script is at its strongest in domestic scenes, which feel naturalistic and filled with the sort of busy cross-talk that is common in households with children. Nights Titi spends at her club with friends stray a little towards the didactic but the visual language is uniformly strong. There is something of a battle of wills between the women, with Ade believing Titi to be self-centred, while being branded self-righteous in return, and Orimogunje captures the way that generating pain can be seen as a way to ameliorate your own suffering. And suffering is something both women do, at the hands of the men in their lives, although Orimogunje avoids melodrama in favour of striking a more melancholic note.

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