The shame and stigma associated with being single mothers in Nigeria is quietly alarming – with the status often loudly discussed on social media or in small circles. Because just being a single mother makes every other human label the woman as a victim of circumstances, as someone undeserving of another chance at finding love or feeling loved, or as an outlier who should perpetually live her life in seclusion, tending to her first or other kids.
For all its worth, the beauty of Something Sweet by Zikoko Life lies right in this bold foray into the life of Ziora (Michelle Dede), a successful business owner in her 40s, who falls in love with Leke (Ogranya Jable Osai), a young man in his 20s (actually 28) and opens the door for noise in her otherwise quiet life, or so it appears.
Now, apart from Leke’s mother (Tolu Odewunmi) who not so strongly objected to Leke’s love affair with Ziora, and Jidenna (Oladozie Olawaiye), Ziora’s grownup son from her first marriage, who at first helplessly objected to his mother’s relationship with Leke, the film does not do well with creating conflicts where it is most needed. It is rather unusual not to have a lot of pushback when this issue is concerned. What happens to other members of society? Leke’s friends? Ziora’s? What about gossip and whispers?
Well, perhaps this depiction of minimal conflict is an intentional act from the scriptwriter, to portray in a refreshing way that it is not all doom and hard luck whenever a single mother is trying to give herself a chance at finding love or feeling loved again. Or that there are a couple other men like Leke who do not mind marrying a single mother. A character he beautifully emboldens. With Michelle Dede being simply Ziora in her outstanding performance as a single mother as she strays from society.
While this depiction is refreshing and beautiful to see on screen, it does not in essence capture our Nigeria’s reality, or other realities we expect to see on screen. Something Sweet only scratches the surface, gives single mothers less conflict and by extension hope to run by, but fails to tell them how to deal with this hope or what to do when this hope fails. Like Lenrie Peters wrote in one of his poems The Panic of Growing Older, and I quote: “hope is not a grain of sand”. That is, it is not something tangible that it should be relied upon. Hope itself is uncertain and fragile—it can shift, disappear, or disappoint, especially if it’s not grounded in reality or action. If there is anything a single mother wants to see on screen, it is not only the hope and belief that love can visit them, even in the most unexpected places or from persons, even way younger than they are.
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Single mothers often dread whether the younger men are truly as honest as they claim. Their dread is not just the social or family acceptance as portrayed by Something Sweet. Most single mothers (now I don’t have the immediate statistics for this) are women who have chosen themselves by leaving an abusive marriage or a marriage that stifles their growth. Ziora in Something Sweet even mentions it from her past marriage. If they could choose themselves in their earlier marriage–at being a divorcé or single mother, they will do so again and again–at being involved with a younger man. But their fear is different.
And this fear is unexplored in Something Sweet. The film fails to explore or should have explored the complexities and intricacies involved in finding true love: the creeping doubts, the existential fear, the great unknowns, or perhaps discerning spirits. Instead, Something Sweet throws hope at single mothers’ faces and tells them to do whatever they want with it, even though there are many other single mothers out there who would truly like to know what’s true or not true about the love they receive from men, or to know what it feels to want the kind of hope that never gives up.
Throwing hope at people is beautiful, like the refreshing way Something Sweet portrays it, but the journey before the realisation of hope, and how to navigate this journey, is what many people are interested in. But for all its acting, fresh exposition and neat cinematography, Something Sweet is half-baked; it should have taken us and fully immersed us in this journey. And no, its being a short film is not an excuse.
Based on their written series, Zikoko Life, is created by Anita Eboigbe and produced by Blessing Uzzi for Bluhouse Studios. The three-part anthology series (What’s Left Of Us, Something Sweet and My Body, God’s Temple) is streaming on Zikoko’s YouTube channel.
