Let down by the story

by Cheta Nwanze



After a marketing blitz, it was with a lot of anticipation that I went to watch the much hyped Ijé, featuring Genevieve Nnaji, Omotola Jalade-Ekeinde and Ulrich Que.

Warning: spoiler content

The movie begins with Chioma (Nnaji) arriving in Los Angeles to a hostile immigration reception. After battling her way through, she gets to her pre-booked hotel and encounters her first disappointment: the hoteliers have increased their price without notifying her, in a classic hustle. She has to pay $50 a week more than budgeted.

The next scene introduces Anya (Jalade-Ekeinde), Chioma's sister, who is awaiting trial for a triple homicide. She's the reason why Chioma, who works in a Nigerian bank, has come to the US. In that first and rather touching scene, Chioma uses the ruse of freedom of religion to get to see her sister sans the glass partition. In that scene, we are told Anya's side of the story, that she did not kill her husband. She also informs Chioma that her lawyer had asked her to plea-bargain.

The next day, Chioma goes to the lawyer's office to speak about her sister's case. Anya's lawyer, Patricia Barone (Anne Carey) has made up her mind that there is no other way for the matter to progress except by plea-bargain. She comes across as believing that Anya was actually guilty. Meanwhile, a chance meeting outside the courtroom with another lawyer shows Chioma that not all American lawyers are cold blooded. Jalen (Que) has just been fired for refusing to plea-bargain on behalf of a client, thus losing a murder trial. His demeanour persuades Chioma to approach him about becoming her sister's lawyer.

The build-up to the trial follows with the usual American legal rigmarole: a prosecution lawyer who sees cases like this as mere statistics to add to his already bulging belt of convictions, some visits by Chioma to Anya's residence, and an introduction to Anya's neighbour.

As time goes on, it becomes clear that Anya is not exactly telling the truth about what happened on the night that she killed at least two men (she admitted to killing two, but not her husband), and the onus is now on Chioma to find the sixth person that was in the house on that fateful night.

In between all this, there are flashbacks to the sisters' childhood which, from the background, is somewhere in a village in the north-central region of Nigeria. Their childhood had all the ingredients of a Cinderella story: poor girls who were eventually transported to some form of success, but not before passing through some rough times, most notably a pogrom in the village that they lived in.

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