The Zikoko Life Shorts

Love in Three Stages

Disclaimer: These reviews contain spoilers. If you haven’t watched them, you should do so before reading this. However, if you don’t mind, you can proceed.

Love is at the centre of the Zikoko Life universe. How it begins (Something Sweet), how it progresses (My Body, God’s Temple), and how it shatters (What’s Left of Us). These YouTube shorts come at a time when Nollywood is suffering a quality crisis and inducing—due to systematic poor releases—a telling fatigue in the average avid Nollywood watcher with high expectations. They complicate the dichotomy one might draw between the terrible cinema releases, the straight-to-streaming films (most of which have been lackluster, shoddy, and uninspired), and the YouTube films that have recently gained notoriety for being famous cash grabs for directors and filmmakers who want to bypass the traditional route. Basically, these Zikoko shorts, all fairly well-written, acted, and shot, make it more accurate to assert that Nolly YouTube does have some gems that can compete with the industry’s traditional films, especially those on the indie front that’ve had great festival runs.

That this is the case shouldn’t be surprising because when you peel back a layer and interrogate how these films were made, it becomes clear that most of the people involved in these productions have had success in the festival run, too. However, these shorts augur a promise that we’ve seen before in the likes of Jade Osiberu and Kemi Adetiba, who made their debut decades ago, dropping classics along the way and putting out recent works with questionable quality. Let’s dive in, though, yeah?

Something Sweet

The rom-com is a dice toss that rolls into a double six. All ends well. The drama dissolves into love vows. We are often presented with two characters who fall in love relatively quickly, collide against each other’s edges and their societal expectations, then, despite all—including, for many, the separation—end up together, having grown and rejected or defeated their society’s codes. Although short, Something Sweet is a classic romance story that applies notable tropes without falling into eye-rolling cliches. I only call it a romance because it ends with both characters getting together, and, maybe if I’m being lenient, the frictionless banter that existed between them. That’s about it. Most of the jokes were a miss, but I’ll come back to that much later.

It’s a classic romance with another classic romance trope: the age gap. Something Sweet follows Adeleke Adebayor (Ogranya Jable Osai), a twenty-eight-year-old app developer and bachelor, who falls in love with Ziora (Michelle Dede), a forty-something-year-old business owner and single mother. Written and directed by Dika Ofoma, Something Sweet is beautifully shot, but what is more palpable beyond the lush bougainvillea inflorescence at the picnic ground and that one symmetrical pool shot is the acting. The acting is near-flawless. It is compelling. And permits multiple rewatches.

Both actors bring a certain weighty levity to the screen that’s sweet, poignant, and, frankly, memorable. Leke is bewitched by Ziora at first glance. Struck by lightning in a blue dress. His blink doesn’t, at any time, interrupt his gaze. In the shop, in the kitchen, in the house. His eyes always manage to find hers. He looks at Ziora as if activating an X-ray vision of her heart, watching it pump blood in words that arrange the things she only lets her searching eyes confess between stolen glances.

Michelle Dede, the other half of the magnet, plays to perfection the fettered woman who is reluctant to trade in her autonomy for something more reciprocal. She’s too old to gamble or engage in puppy love, but isn’t too old to reject the suya cut of the kilishi-thin wish offered by those moments where Leke insists on chivalry that seems way beyond his years. Both Leke and Ziora mirror and magnetize each other well, but their bond falters slightly in one aspect for me: how the film explores their age gap.

In a picnic scene that follows after a couple of hangouts between the pair, neither Leke’s love confession nor his assumption that Ziora might have feelings for him too surprises her; however, the request, casual and uncoy, for a mutual exploration erupts three protests from her—a) I’m a busy woman, b) staff could be watching, c) you’ll end up hurting yourself—all deflections that camouflage the true friction a relationship between them would suggest.

To be fair, age gaps are tricky to depict. One has to avoid the obvious pitfalls of rape, abuse, and coercion, the inherent imbalance between the love interests might imply. Else, you either end up with Lolita or Call Me By Your Name, both of which suffer from the fact that audiences, probably due to incredibly suggestive marketing, misunderstand both works as romances, when they stand as critiques of such predatory dynamics. Even that framing of both protagonists as love interests could prove problematic. It is a very liminal space to spawn romance and work out its personal, cultural, and social reverberations without indirectly crafting a subtle apologia for the dynamic. Even when immense care is applied, the risk of misinterpretation abounds. Hence, the subversion Something Sweet traffics in.

In trying to avoid this disaster, Something Sweet does something clever: it raises the younger person’s age. A twenty-eight-year-old man is old enough to date a forty-something-year-old woman. The gap might collect frowns but not invite a criminal investigation. The clash with society will not be as staunch as with another age range, say, a twenty-two-year-old undergraduate and a forty-year-old bank manager. However, by closing the age gap, it flattens so many complexities and outsources the conflict to setups that convince only by half. Contrast this with what we have in Cha Cha Real Smooth, a 2022 American romantic comedy-drama between a twenty-two-year-old college graduate (Cooper Raiff) and a thirty-two-year-old single mother (Dakota Johnson), where the romance between both characters is offset and complicated by both their age differences and socioeconomic realities.

In Something Sweet, this kind of discrepancy never comes up seriously between the characters. And by this, I mean, their difference in age doesn’t appear during interactions or along socioeconomic lines. There is no linguistic gap between them—they don’t have different synonyms for words or phrases, for example, that would show even if a small generational divide like Millennials’ YOLO, to Gen Z’s: fuck it, we ball. There is no financial gap between them either—Leke has as much money as her, which not only implies that the average twenty-eight-year-old app developer in Nigeria has that much money to spend, but also that what would’ve been another source of tension is tacitly erased.

As a result of the wetting of wood, third parties are introduced as wine to flambé conflicts. Or, to be more kind, the social implications are explored in what would otherwise be harmless events. If only it were convincing enough. The scene where Leke and Ziora visit a market for Ziora to buy stuff for her shop feels contrived. Not the situation, but the emotional ricochet. The scene is shot with an impatience to entrench the discord without properly setting up the romance between the love interests that gets thwarted by an incensed seller.

With Leke holding an umbrella over himself and Ziora, they approach the shop, and Ziora hugs the seller, while Leke props down the umbrella. Still effervescent from the exchange of pleasantries, the seller mistakes Leke for Ziora’s son (which isn’t far-fetched, given how much they both look alike), and this throwaway comment sours both their moods. Their anger is unjustified. The rage is designed. If they’d strutted into the shop hand-in-hand, his hand on her waist, or with him whispering something into his ear, then the woman’s comment could’ve landed as a covert remark meant to call out her disgust without ruining a running relationship with her long-time customer, Ziora. Let me be more generous: if, after the woman’s comment, Leke had tried to breach Ziora’s personal space or made some gesture towards an intimate proximity, then Ziora’s own anger would’ve been justified. Instead, what we get is a telepathy triangle of transmitted discomforts.

And Leke offers to pay, not in a, oh, let me pay for my baby’s stuff, that’d’ve raised the woman’s suspicion, but more in a, I’m pissed you think I’m her son because can’t you see it written on my forehead or twiddled into my fat moustache that we’re together. It is a tantrum even a toddler would decline enacting. Ziora’s scolding has to follow, else the scene would just collapse on its head. Because prior to their discord in the car, the scene is shot with at least one object—first the pole, then the woman—between the couple, signifying a small rift, and the climax is reached when all three characters are caught in the same frame without any divider as Leke steps into the shop to pay for Ziora’s goods.

When Leke introduces Ziora to his mum, we see a more sophisticated social game at play, where a compliment from her to Ziora functions as a scythe, and an extended hug between her and Leke doubles as marking territory. But these two zits are zapped by one dismissal in one conversation, once again undermining what could’ve been an opportunity for a snarky parry or a mug overfroth. Instead, a turning stick is placed over the boiling pot of rice. Things flatline before they can climax.

Of the three major scenes where the age problem arises, only one truly captures a creak that threatens actual rupture: the scene involving Ziora’s son, Jide. Jide’s fury follows from the fact that he finds his mum being chummy with Leke. His motive is solid, his reaction understandable, his apology saccharine. The film veers off into a fairy tale with its covert insinuations that it’s that easy to find a partner as a single mother in Nigeria—it sells false hope in high doses. Even Ziora’s receptionist is, for some reason, already rooting for Leke by the time the movie is almost over: in Nigeria, where a receptionist’s glare can light a cigarette and where gossip ferments into poison.

It is all too easy. Ironic as it may seem, romantic comedies often require more conflict than a romantic drama or a melodrama. The major difference is that the conflict is framed to highlight the humour; it is strife for them, but comedy for us. Something Sweet refuses to develop conflict. All the antagonisms it realises are buried without so much as a ripple.

And that is because it wants to earn its romance and comedy only through intentionality and reassurance. In this regard, it is so one-note that it almost turns humourless. For example, the next day after Ziora confronts her son about disrespecting Leke, he opens the door to find Leke standing there. He peddles sarcasm towards Leke, saying his mum isn’t around, knowing she is upstairs preparing for a date with Leke. The joke doesn’t land because he doesn’t sell it. You cannot compare the delivery to any of the chortle-churning one-liners in Casablanca. You can tell when the movie is trying to be funny, but it registers only as a cerebral event that never becomes visceral. Forgiveness ought to be offered here: it is easier to murder a hired assassin than it is to make a person laugh.

The film’s technical aspects are commendable. The set design is one of the most beautiful I’ve seen in a while—the deep reds, the blazing amaranths, the quiet turquoise, all of which complement or contrast well with the costumes, which were curated, from my perspective, not to stand out but to blend in. It creates a seamless visual picture. And the cinematography reinforces these strengths.

Something Sweet is a delightful surprise from a writer-director infamous for his critically acclaimed and audience-loved films that often explore grief. It is a remarkable achievement that expands the growing oeuvre of one of the most interesting and fast-rising Nigerian writer-directors currently in the industry.

What’s Left of Us

Although we like to think of it as a venn diagram with both parties conceding something, a fraction of what they truly desire, perhaps, the truth is that a compromise is more akin to a vendetta—a one-sided affair—than it is to a ceasefire. And marriage, for most women, is a vendetta. It doesn’t often always begin as one. There is courting (hopefully) and jesting (hopefully), and orgasms (hopefully), and a true sense of camaraderie. But institutions have a funny way of reminding us they’re institutions. Institutions resist reforms that alter their structure too much without outsourcing to their guardians. Institutions, often older and more patient than our fiery notions, are the bears at the riverbank that catch the salmon that’d been swimming for miles and miles and miles.

Romance, the training wheels for grooming most women into entering contracts that promise endless domestic labour, gets shelved. Kids arrive. And power assassinates promises. Things turn. The wife becomes a maid, mother, infant, and sex worker to her husband. This often happens over years, in drip-fed opinions over anniversary dinners, family functions, and during hangouts with friends. Like all backstabbings, it begins with a tender hug and a pat on the back.

The first release in Big Cabal Media’s anthology shorts under Zikoko Life, What’s Left of Us, directed by Victor Daniel and Olamide Adio, charts the dilemma this opening hints at between compromise, desire, dreams, and autonomy. Where do the lines of labour intersect to form a cross of servitude? Where does appeasement turn into resentment? What kind of love demands an abandonment of self to function? And if it functions, for whom does it function? Who is the robot in the equation?

Mariam (Tolu Asanu) wakes up in the middle of the night, probably post-coitus, to take some contraceptives. The next night, Aliyu (Caleb Richards), her husband, searching for something, finds it. He accuses her of sabotaging his dream of more children and sends her parking—in the middle of the night. In marital exile, Mariam is forced to reflect on how much of herself she’s conceded to the marriage, how much tax she’s paid to the patriarchy ever since she decided to get married and have children. She tallies her losses, and her ire rages on. Forgiveness, as a suggestion, infuriates her. She seeks revenge, not in retribution, but by reclaiming her life lost to the service of her husband, who has a mistress and whose idea of an apology is showing up in a pressed caftan and a combed beard and pride stacked as high as stolen pancakes.

But before the crack turns into a fissure and after getting angry at his mistress for daring to introduce a condom to their sessions, Aliyu makes multiple attempts to get his wife back. That is a misleading framing: Aliyu is determined to get back his slave. That is a harsh framing: a determined Aliyu makes multiple attempts to get back his wife, whom he enslaved after the exchange of vows. After a conversation doesn’t soften her heart, after bringing the children to sleepover as agreed doesn’t tug her shadow, Aliyu, a wise man who understands the workings of institutions, takes Mariam to a mosque for the Imam to counsel her and bring her under the obedience she’d vowed to obey once they got married.

In one of the best framed scenes from the film, Mariam and Aliyu sit as the Imam scolds her for her refusal to return, while he interprets Aliyu’s infidelity as a gender privilege of power. Mariam is furious. This will only push her further into her social heist. She will get a job. She will start all over. She will never be driven out in the middle of the night. But the scene at the mosque is Mariam at her angriest, not in the kitchen, much later, when she and her husband get into the pace-and-talk quarrel. It is in the mosque where she experiences the truth about being a woman actively participating in an institution not built for her kind. Society is a conspiracy against women. It is a cage made up of people.

While WLOF gives us situations that give the themes room to bloom, it also has an identity crisis. One moment it is a drama, the next it’s an edutainment show outlining the properties of different contraceptive methods. I got tired in between the shots. Not that there’s anything against teaching about different contraceptive methods, but because it feels like the movie went on a commercial break. It was an odd coagulation.

The acting here, like in the other two shorts, is fine. Their performance supersedes the material they’re working with. Caleb is more than convincing as Aliyu, and Tolu doesn’t drown in the demands the role makes of her. Together they form Flintstones as they clash, as their personal ambitions, both informed by opposite sides of a great divide, split them asunder, the framework of their marriage becomes increasingly clear: it functions under her subjugation. Anything else wouldn’t suffice. She has been rented out to a man whose autonomy hasn’t been compromised by their union. She wants out, and she stages an exit that is both as loud and quiet as death.

My Body, God’s Temple

Sex can be as pleasurable as it can be harrowing. Ideally, it ought to tilt towards pleasure all the time, but that’s not always the case. And My Body, God’s Temple, written, directed, and acted by Uzoamaka Power, presents a particular instance with an emotional and upbeat tone, which both combined to make it my favourite of all three. The story follows two newlywed couples, Omalisu and Zion, whose doe-eyed fantasy of sex is shattered during their honeymoon as the wife struggles with intimacy.

“Can you unclench your knees for me?” A question offered by the groom to Omalisu introduces the central tension in the story. Omalisu, who’s never had sex before, visibly rattled and managing her anxiety, tries and tries, but she cannot grant the request—her knees stay clenched and her smile dims and dies. They have a conversation about it the next day and promise to keep at it until a different outcome occurs. Zion, played with sheer tenderness by Andrew Yaw Bunting, is patient, reassuring. He wants sex, not out of obligation, but out of mutual desire, which comes at a fortuitous time, given the discourse on Nigerian Twitter where the presence or prevalence of marital rape has been nullified, distorted, and flattened.

Omalisu, after lying to her friends about how great her first night was, finally confesses to them about the struggle, the unromantic reality at hand. And the friends, who seem more like props for endless positive reinforcement, levy solutions to her, none of which include seeing a doctor for a professional diagnosis or prescription. In a review I read, I was shocked to see the description that Omalisu’s inability to have sex was tied solely to her Catholic guilt and anxiety induced by purity culture, rather than grounded in something medical like vaginismus to bolster the cultural stressors.

Her thought process is troubling: she doesn’t want him to leave her because of the sex thing, and she feels guilty for making him wait for nothing. Echoes that of What’s Left of Us

After a Reddit search on her condition, after confiding in her friends, Omalisu does what she knows best and carries her woes to church. She kneels in front of the altar and prays for Jesus not to forsake her. Her prayer carries troubling undertones: she’s not worried about herself alone, but that she might lose her husband to another woman, this phantom sexually experienced woman that snatches married men, a thought process that absolves men who cheat on their partners as driven by sexual dissatisfaction and covertly positions sex as a man’s right. So, she kneels at the altar, where she’s one with the painted figures looking up to the crucified Christ, as she pleads and pleads.

The tension hangs in their marriage. Omalisu accuses Zion of not trying; he offers a suggestion that they watch porn together, and purity culture raises its head again as Omalisu is disgusted, if not turned off by this development. Her issues with it aren’t grounded in the exploitative nature of sex work and the abuse endemic in the sex economy that drives the production of global porn, but that it goes against her faith, a verdict she parrots again when she catches Zion, days later, masturbating in the bathroom. She can’t even say the word masturbating. Her tongue refuses its pronunciation. They argue, he reassures her; the cycle begins a new orbit. It is curious that a woman as prude as Omalisu ends up with friends who are sexually informed and gets married to a sexually open man. It is curious that friction over this has never come up before to the point of either her friends or husband challenging some of her beliefs prior to now.

This time, her friends delivered a vibrator to her. And her prudishness dies an instant death after one or two playful laughs from her friends. And, by the grace of God and through the power of friendship, she orgasms for the first time, while on the phone with her husband. (Missed opportunity for him to talk her through it). The film glosses over the hypocrisy in the difference between its depiction of her masturbation as opposed to the husband’s. And, true to his quiet and gentle nature, Zion welcomes the development wholeheartedly, and they finally have sex.

This only opens another problem and shows how steeped in purity culture Omalisu’s relationship with sex is. Unsure of whether she enjoyed the experience herself, she’s quick to ask Zion if he enjoyed it. His satisfaction is more important than her pleasure. He, as always, reassures her. They hang out, have a small picnic, stroll through a pathway decorated with balloons, where their love finds new expression, and they have sex again, glorious sex. It’s a rushed timeline for me. And a victory lap that plunges into what the film had, up to that point, tried very hard to avoid: a rose-coloured look at sex and intimacy within marriages, especially one where the woman is very inexperienced.

Nonetheless, congratulations are in order; she meets her friends; they have shots; she tells them the news; they have some more shots in that weird framing the film prefers where they end up looking like left over cigarettes from an almost emptied pack; they have some more shots; make some sex positive jokes; some more shots; antinatalist jokes; shots; Zion enters the frame; he dances with his wife; the merry, merry end. I only have one question here in relation to a callback from an earlier scene: Why did Zion immediately palm his face with the hand he was using to wank off?

Conclusion

The Zikoko Life shorts were all well-shot, well-designed, and well-acted. The writing is beyond the Nollywood average, but there’s still a lot of work to be done. However, everyone involved in all three projects shows a great deal of promise that would mature in the face of more ambitious commissions. Their take on love was varied, wholesome, and questionable in parts, but the art is there, the stab at mastery—Uzoamaka’s acting, for example, here is a huge improvement from her performance in Ife, and her directing is commendable; Ogranya’s performance stakes him out as a talent to look out for in the coming years; and Dika’s take on love positions him as a prolific talent with prodigious prospects the likes of which we’ve not seen in forever. The future of Nollywood is bright and in good hands, as long as they don’t make the fatalistic mistakes of their predecessors who traded mastery for money, and sensibility for sensationalism.

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