Producer: Sobe Charles and Chris Eneaji
Director: Chris Eneaji
Cast: Chris Attoh, Yvonne Jegede, Genny Uzoma, Olakunle Fawole-Abounce, Ayo Adesanya
Year: 2018
The first thing we know about Ebere in over 2 hours of watching “Love and Cancer” is that she is a woman in love. Love for her means being comfortable enough to reject the idea of marriage. Ebere is a teacher and her partner (Chris Attoh) is a doctor. Before they started a relationship, she walked into his office to complain of the re-occurring headache she has been suffering. Instead of diagnose the problem, he asks really personal questions, she hates him for it, but his questions score him a date. Years later, we find out that the headache she has been complaining of is as a result of a brain tumour.
With some weeks to her death, “Love and Cancer” gives us a glimpse to Ebere’s past and the implication of the past to her future. It almost scores an A for its exploration of love in the face of critical challenges, but it fails in every other area it tries to tackle, including its focus on cancer.
Sobe Charles and Chris Eneaji make an effort to depict how the lack of motivation in the health system, in Nigeria, can lead to the death of patients. If Ebere was diagnosed earlier, she could have survived but even when her situation gets critical, a doctor interprets it as pregnancy. “Love and Cancer” quickly explores some of these challenges before suffering from lack of attention to detail from its crew.
Having two directors to its credit does not mean that the many inconsistencies that complicate this story will be noticed. For a cancer patient that is unconscious for days, it is shocking that Ebere regains consciousness with lips smeared in lipstick. This escaped the directors, the continuity team, the make-up artistes and even the actors. This happens over and again.
While it delves into love in an interesting way and even gives Chris Attoh, a totally heart-breaking role to play, “Love and Cancer” almost makes cancer a trivial issue in the way Nollywood takes important topics for granted. It is good that a man sticks with a woman he loves but there was a need for more.
“Love and Cancer” earns a 6/10
