Omotola Jolade Ekeinde, one-time Time 100 person of the year and Nigerian mega superstar is returning to the big screens after 3 years away. And she is doing it in a big way, she is finally taking on the dreaded Nollywood taboo of the three-dimensional sex scene.
Nollywood has always been paradoxical about depictions of sex in its movies. Its fascination with sex has inspired underground runaway successes like the Tonto Dikeh and Muna Obiekwe helmed Men In Love, and allowed a number of mid-level actors gain infamy and a lot of money starring in B-rated movies that had entire plots written to provide the main characters opportunities to engage in simulated sex. Mainstream Nollywood, however, remained conspicuously chaste, even when the characters portrayed were supposed to be sexually liberated. Even when sex was portrayed on screen, it was often sanitised to the point where it was almost pointless to include it. The new generation of Nollywood filmmakers are gaining international attention, and that is giving them the much-needed confidence to attempt genre conventions that a few years before would never happen.
It does make sense though that the first mainstream actress to attempt realistic sex on screen would be Omotola. In her teens, she starred in Domitilla, a role where she played a literal prostitute. That role would have destroyed and pigeonholed a less charismatic actress, but Omotola has weathered many storms. According to a NET.ng interview, this is what Omotola has to say about the roles.
While shooting the film, I knew I was doing something quite risky. There are several ways to shoot a sex scene tastefully. I’m all for playing a sex scene convincingly and my husband knows this.
‘I tell my husband, ‘You know what darling, you married an actor’; and secondly, he is my biggest fan. ‘I tell him, ‘Do you want me to be great or do you just want me to be good?’ He will say, ‘I want you to be great, sparklingly great’. Then I’ll say, ‘Ehen, we go love o’ and he’s fine with it.’
If the team behind this does it right, Alter Ego is about the become a touchstone for portraying women on screen as capable of sex for reasons other than seduction and procreation. And for us to only be attempting this in 2017, showing women as three-dimensional persons, is long overdue.
PAUVRE