0
0
There’s no doubt about Omotola Jalade Ekeinde’s star quality in Alter Ego, which has wound down at Cinemas last August.
The film has a meaningful message; the passionate law attorney, Ada Igwe (Omotola Jalade Ekeinde), focuses her law practice on seeing sex offenders, especially child rapists, go to jail.
When the loopholes in the system allow offenders to go scot free, this committed activist gets punishment for the perpetrators through other means.
The film develops the Ada Igwe character so well, that supporting stars are largely dimmed. Wale Ojo’s role is that of a rich philanthropist who puts his foundation’s finances in the services of refugees and internally displaced persons. His is the only fully developed character in the film, next to Ada Igwe’s.
The blogosphere has focused less on the film’s core story and exaggerated the input of the so called sex scenes. The message is that every individual has a purpose in society; here’s a woman sexually abused as a young girl by a philandering teacher, who grows into an activist, but also exhibits nymphomaniac tendencies as a result of the damage the early experiences have wrought.
The truth is that the sex scenes are tame, even mediocre. Where naked bodies move close to each other, they hardly touch and, in playing true to Nollywood’s prudish tendencies, there’s more “apply the grease on the bodies to show the aftermath of sex” than anything close to real groping.
Alter Ego may not be the best arranged picture Nollywood has delivered in the last year, but its message is far more significant than every other flick and deserves a more coherent debate than these soft sell print and Internet media are keen to engage in.
By T.A. First published in Artsville, in The Guardian on Sunday
