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Áfàméfùnà: My comical thoughts
Patricia Beshel
Patricia Beshel
6 months ago

DISCLAIMER: I'm not a film maker or a script writer so please….. This is just my own review. I also stand corrected because I may be wrong, and there are several other opinions that may be correct.


I want to start by asking where Nigerian filmmakers are always rushing to, that they end up giving us surface level stories with no depth or plot development? Just airbrushing through a shallow plot at best, but whatever.


So Afam is taken in for questioning by the police, and starts to recall the story of him and Paulo. He tells the ASP that he couldn’t have possibly killed Paulo because he was his best friend, and even more; his brother.. And this is supposed to set the tone for the story we’re about to watch. 


Everything is good from this point, we see Paulo actually carrying Afam through, and we see this whole best friend-ship thing happening. 


**I want to quickly bring in a tweet that said Amaka was too accessible for someone that was “oga’s daughter”. This is actually not true, because for a girl with a father that's potrayed as a very good man whom she shares a good relationship with, developing feelings at that age towards one of her dad’s boys who is attractive, street smart and hardworking is not unreasonable. Also running with the assumption that her dad was once an apprentice under someone, it would make sense for her to see potential in him asides anything else, and so the rest of what they have progresses from this point.**


Now ignoring everything else, Afam talks about seeing Paulo and Amaka for the first time, and other times subsequently; but the first interaction we see between Amaka and Afam is of her crying that she got swindled by Paulo, and him comforting her. Nothing prior, so we don’t even know if they were good friends or at least well acquainted outside of the apprentice arrangement, based on having one person they both held dearly. 


It moves to a good number of years in the future where he sees her again, and is very emotional(?) about her and dives into asking her if she was married(despite not seeing a ring), or if she was seeing anybody yada yada. Paulo comes out and there’s some tension, but Afam boldly gives her his card even after the spiteful PDA, which we see Paulo collect from her and put in his pocket.


*Pause*, -this means the next scene we see of Amaka and Afam having lunch together, implies that she took the card and called/texted Afam without Paulo’s knowledge and that meet up happened. Wow wow wow okay.


Afam asks about how she ended up back with Paulo, and she says something about him showing up to her graduation and the way he looked at her or something. Girl wait- are you dumb? Because you’re clearly loved at home so what is this?


Okay so this other Afam boy now jumps to profess feelings for her from nowhere, which also portrays him as bold, quite alright. And she too, is showing obvious signs of emotional confusion, even though there was no type of romantic build up between them till this point, except that he used to admire her from afar, which all the other boys did anyways. So now, are they trying to tell us it could’ve been any other of her dad’s former apprentices and she would’ve agreed to marry? (maybe the accessibility tweet was right).


Anyways she goes to see Paulo, they have sex, which is more like closure for her and confirmation that Paulo won’t take her seriously, so she goes to the one that is ready and they get married.


ALL OF A SUDDEN, PAULO IS BROKE AND TAKING MONEY FROM AFAM ON WHAT BASIS?? We are aware of a strained relationship and the fact that he even “collected” his babe and married her, so how did we get here?


Afam is paying 5m monthly to people he has no business with, for a man who clearly holds so much bile and vitriol towards him. Next thing we know he’s demanding 10m to go for a party with Lagos big boys when he’s supposedly a flat broke boy. This is not the hustler they portrayed at the beginning, but let’s say people lose their way and that’s why he’s here now. Afam is begging him, and still explaining himself on top of his own money, to which Paulo pulls out blackmail material and threatens to *expose* him. 


Excuse me?? Excuse meeee??


Okay now ony’iberibe finds out Paulo is telling the truth and settles him, for what we still don’t understand, but, we’re going to assume he loves Amaka so much that he doesn’t want any stain on her name and doesn’t want to subject his family to any type of public ridicule. We all know he could’ve threatened to stop paying the 5m here instead of paying that 10m, because nothing good ever comes out of blackmail and the stakes against Paulo would’ve been higher. But at this point, we’ve established that Paulo is the air he breathes so even after that type of threat, he keeps up with the payment; -starting to look like that’s whom he was in love with BECAUSE WHERE DID ALL THE BOLDNESS SUDDENLY DISAPPEAR TO?


**Side note, I genuinely think it’s in cases like this that “black tax” is important. If Afam had family members relying solely on him to train and care for them, he wouldn’t have been acting a fool with money for Paulo**



 Anyhoo…. Mr man comes back for more as expected, and Afam the big spender is still explaining himself. As a matter of fact, he’s even still calling him his brother, which Paulo verbally reiterates to him for the second time that we’ve seen, that he’s not his brother; (shocking 🙄). Our wife comes out acting oblivious, which is our first hint that she doesn’t know what has been happening. We later confirm that she didn’t in fact, which is to say this clearly wasn’t an issue for Afam at all that he never saw the need to discuss it with his wife. He must’ve really been a big spender walahi. I’m even going to question their relationship as husband and wife now or how in love they were that she didn’t see signs that something was wrong. 


So he finally makes the call, and that one they call Paulo is taken out.


When he leaves the station, his boys are waiting outside for him, which implies that the event which he was taken from for questioning, took place in Lagos. You’re trying to tell me, and the rest of the audience, that an Igbo man, threw a party in honor of his father’s remembrance, in Lagos. If you really say so.


Finally, 


*deep, long, audible sigh*. Paulo, from a distance, could tell that Lotana was his son, but AMAKA SAID SHE DIDN'T KNOW THE CHILD WAS PAULO’S. Okay. The end.




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