What is the extent you’ll go for someone you claim to love? Where would you draw the line? I have decided not to be rating movies anymore, I mean, I should get paid for sitting through a movie and giving my honest ratings shouldn’t I? Femi played by Ramsey Nouah in Kunle Afolayan’s epoch making movie “Araromire” is in love with his best friend’s girlfriend turned fiancée turned wife. Solum played by Kunle Afolayan, really does love his wife Mona but is a cheating husband. Mona does not know that her husband is a cheat and her life is sailing on smooth seas. While the trio is going to serve their country in a town called “Araromire” Femi has a ring with which he hopes to propose to Mona but he never does it and Sola beats him to it. Muna on the other hand is not in love with Femi but loves Sola the bad guy. (talk about good girls falling for the bad guys all the time). In the town while serving, they stumble upon a deity which for reasons best known to him, Sola decides to keep to himself for the heck of it but folklore has it that the deity brings seven years of good luck and seven years of bad luck. Now, Mona after hearing about the deity believes that her life is indeed going too smoothly…you know the saying that “if it is too good to be true, it probably is”…. Yeah! She thinks that her life is indeed being orchestrated by the deity but her husband does not believe it. Again, after the deity was found, everything around Femi and Sola was just going smoothly; Femi’s dad who was dying of cancer miraculously survived it, he got a job immediately after service, even Sola, after parading his arrogant self at a job interview gets the job, in fact life is just sweet for both of them and their families. Sola on the other hand is now a proud dad and is expecting his second child and his marriage is filled with love, laughter and camaraderie. Muna gets uncomfortable with the figurine in her home and orders it thrown out but miraculously it reappears and then she begins to get paranoid. Femi’s dad dies, both Femi and Sola lose their jobs simultaneously; things just start taking a bad turn and guess what! Yes! It happens exactly seven years after Sola picked the figurine. Coincidence or jazz? Find out in the movie.
Well, it turns out that Femi never did fall out of love with his best friend’s wife and uses everyone he can to bring tragedy to everyone including his sister. Apparently, “Araromire” indeed is just folklore but he capitalized on Mona’s paranoia. Femi got his dad to re-make the figurine as his father was a painter, sculptor and art person generally and while everyone got scared that the figurine was pulling “appearing acts” it was just Femi replacing one figurine after the other. His inspiration was that Sola did not deserve Mona and only he could love her the way she deserved. How’s that for a psychotic mind?
I am not going to narrate the whole story…like I said, go see it. I’m going into every other thing about it.
The plot is fantastic, the theme was very clear and Nigeria was celebrated. I have never been so proud of a Nigerian movie. The golf course where they played was ours, the paintings hanging in their homes were totally Nigerian or African, it had nothing western and anything western there, was created by us. The dressing, the language (Yoruba based movie), and our culture was celebrated, even Governor Fashola was celebrated. Mona and Sola taught their son how to “dobale” when greeting an elderly person and how to greet in his mother’s language (she’s Edo). It was a Nigerian tale with a down to earth delivery of the script. Who says you can’t pay to see a Nigerian movie at the cinemas? It cannot even be compared to another movie…it is one of its kind.
No matter how much you’ve lost faith in Nigerian movies, I put it to you that you must love at least one thing about the movie. For the first time in my life, I wished I were part of the cast and crew. If there are any flaws in that movie, yours truly did not see it, maybe I’ll detect it when I see it again but for right here and now, the movie is a must see and for those who feel you haven’t started until you go to South –Africa or America to shoot a “C” movie, well, it is an “A” movie by our standard.
To the cast and crew of “Araromire” I say congratulations! To Kunle, you did a great job and really with all the westernization going on, it is good to be reminded that our culture and tradition is rich and beautiful and should not be thrown away in the name of civilization. Your movies have always been outstanding though!
Back to my question, how far will you go for someone you love? Would you kill? Would you manipulate? Or will you know when to let go and wait for your own? If that love interest of yours has found love somewhere else, would you destroy it and think that after destroying it, that love interest would really love u? Go see “The Figurine” and answer this question.
