Director and Producer: Bright Wonder Obasi
Screenplay: Bright Wonder Obasi
Cast: Tope Tedela, Daniel K. Daniel, Titi Joseph, Nita Byack, Apei Orduen, Matilda Lambert, Osas Iyamu
Year: 2017
Bright Wonder Obasi creates his third production, about a happy marriage gone sad, what he fails to establish is why the couple encounter the problems they do. We follow his story hoping that some sort of revelation will come out of the experience but the credit rolls and nothing fascinating has happen.
Rowland (Tope Tedela) and Eva (Titi Joseph) are a happy couple. They do everything together. At first glance, they are the perfect couple until abruptly, their relationship goes through ‘undeveloped’ problems, what we manage to enjoy is how these problems escalate and cause the near death of Rowland.
Domestic violence, rape and death are used as plot enhancers. The problem is that the writer forfeits the importance of tackling these social issues, and instead creates a film that he hopes the audience will love for its excessive use of suspense. While establishing instability in the marriage of his lead characters, he forgets to tell us why the problem even starts or how they can possibly solve their issues.
There are loopholes to the writing, like the scene where Titi’s sister accuses Rowland of raping her, and we have every reason to believe he might have raped her, because he walks into the room starring at her seductively. Only for it to be discarded by the director as mere coincidence. What about the pedophilic message the director passes to us by having Rowland look at a 14 year old with sexual anxiety written all over his face? The story could have succeeded without the involvement of social problems to lengthen the show time of the film. This is a total turn off!
Marriage is a journey of its own, and while I enjoy the educational standpoint of “Remarkable”, I don’t enjoy the deliberate decision to create suspense while toying with important social issues.
Remarkable is slow paced and is saved by its lead characters and their enjoyable chemistry even while their relationship suffers from problems. The combination of Titi Joseph ( who is quite the revelation) and Tope Tedela make the film almost bearable.
The film also starts with poor sound, and should have been a reason we smelt doom.
‘Remarkable’ earns 4/10
