Modupe Temi by Saheed Balogun

I only saw Saheed Balogun's Modupe Temi as directed by Daniel Ademinokan last night. I'm not one to sit and watch movies but the film arrested me with its picture quality, lighting, set decor and camera angles. But the most impressive thing about the work is the narrative technique. Saheed Balogun surely scores a big 8/10 from me for the story and you can't fault the acting from both him and Doris Simeon the only cast.

Imagine sustaining the attention of your viewers for more than an hour with just two people(I remember Waiting for Godot)! It takes the sheer brilliance of someone who must have worked on stage before. I don't know if Balogun has ever written for stage but I was stuck to the conversation between the warring couple and laughed, and laughed and laughed (Gabriel Okara).

The story in essence tells about how couples should not settle their problems, do not add more fuel to the raging fire when there's an argument. Interesting till the end but I have a few knocks for the way the conflict was resolved and the ending. Nigerian movies are always trying too hard to end on fine notes that they have to always put in the often annoying resolution of hitting great wealth. It is a sad thing but in all I enjoyed the movie and I'd encourage anyone out there to see it.

Learnt that it's become part of the in flight entertainment of Virgin Nigeria. It's that interesting.

Big ups to Saheed and Doris, great direction from Ademinokan.

I think one of the other lessons one should take away from the movie is when Donald (Balogun) tells his daughter to speak Yoruba and not English, a big shot at many of us who out of ignorance speak English to our children at the expense of our mother tongue. And worse still, most of the English we speak is so poor that we should be ashamed. What a people!