“Farmer’s Bride” Is Thematically Ambitious But Leaves Stones Unturned

What happens when a woman’s desire for emotional agency collides with the weight of tradition? Can love, identity and fate co-exist within the confines of cultural expectations? And how far can one go in defying family imposition and patriarchal boundaries? These, and more questions, inform the narrative trajectory of Farmer’s Bride, a feature film written by Jack’enneth Opukeme and co-directed with Adebayo Tijani. 

Farmer’s Bride takes us into the world of Funmi, a young woman played by  Gbubemi Ejeye, and her quest for autonomy against a society ruled by traditional values and expectations of womanhood. Set in the 1980s in Ibadan, the film captures the persistence of age-old traditions, with numerous references to Yoruba culture, including the talking drum as an object of spiritual significance, ritual practices, the belief in reincarnation, and the traditional concept of patrimony. The directorial approach to the film pays homage to this subtle clash of modern and traditional systems, with Adebayo Tijani known for his work on epic films such as Jagun Jagun and King of Thieves, and Jack’enneth Opukeme bringing a refreshing energy as a first-time director. 

As a writer, Opukeme has developed a reputation for strong, daring female characters. In Battle On Buka Street, a box-office breakthrough co-written with Stephen Oluboyo and produced and directed by Funke Akindele, we encounter co-wives Yejide and Awele as they run their own food businesses and compete chaotically and obsessively in a patriarchal society. With Adire, a film directed by Adeoluwa Owu, Opukeme’s writing introduces us to Adire,  a former sex worker who escapes from her pimp on a journey to regain control of her body and reclaim her identity. A similar motif of resistance and rebellion propels Funmi in Farmer’s Bride as she attempts to take charge of her love life and rewrite her fate.

Farmer’s Bride opens with Funmi’s mother coaxing her into marrying Odun (Femi Branch), a successful, aging farmer who has supposedly been good to the family. It is contrary to Funmi’s wishes, but the young lady ends up marrying him anyway and has to endure marriage with a man she has no romantic attraction for. When she eventually meets Femi (Tobi Bakre), Odun’s nephew, a philanderous young man who returns from the city to settle in the town, they have a secret affair. But Funmi also has to share her love interest with Banke (Efe Irele), a family friend. As Funmi gets pregnant for Femi and attempts to avoid a tradition that would expose her infidelity, she plots with Femi to murder her husband. This vile action triggers a chain of reactions, with karma catching up with them.

The drama thriller  is driven by both veterans such as Femi Branch, Mercy Aigbe and Wumi Toriola and fast-rising acts like Tobi Bakre, Gbubemi Ejeye and Efe Irele. Mercy Aigbe portrays Morenike, Femi’s mother, a traditional healer and spiritualist, formerly married to Odun’s older brother. Morenike and Odun appear to have an affection for each other that is rooted in a pre-existing relationship beyond kinship ties, but this is largely left unexplored as the film deprives the audience of a proper backstory. After Odun passes on, she suspects Funmi of his murder, refuses to let her son marry the young lady as an inheritance, and performs a ritual to invoke the ghost for vengeance. Morenike’s actions appear to be driven by spiritual, maternal, and emotional instincts. Yet, even if these instincts are valid, they lack grounding in any recognizable precedent. The character embodies a fusion of multiple experiences, but the film presents only a visual outline of her life, leaving the discussions surrounding her emotional connection to Odun and her inherited spiritual powers largely unexplored.

Tobi Bakre infuses his character, Femi, with a requisite boyish charm and nonchalant disposition in the young man’s dalliances with Funmi and Banke. It is not exceptional acting, but it suffices for those moments. The film, however, fails to establish a compelling reason for Femi’s permanent return to the local community. We are told that he has abandoned his university education in the city to take over his late father’s wood-carving business, but this choice feels unconvincing. Nowhere in the film do we see Femi working in his workshop or engaging with potential customers, leaving the prospects of his new life, and the logic of his relocation unclear. It is difficult to imagine an educated, even if half-baked, and cosmopolitan young man, aware of the opportunities that city life offers, choosing to settle into a humble trade in a small town.

Farmer’s Bride moves at a commendable pace, as the filmmakers steer the single-minded plot without prevaricating. However, a weak portrayal of the epochal setting and the lack of sufficient contextual details about the sociopolitical landscape hinder our ability to accurately gauge the level of exposure within the fictional community. Except for Funmi’s mother whose command of English is clearly flawed, the rest of the family appear to switch comfortably between English and Yoruba. Funmi’s parents do not honour her desire for tertiary education, yet her quest for formal knowledge explains her mild Western sophistication. Then, there is Femi’s sojourn and academic misadventure in the city. However, beyond the family, other townspeople, from close observation, do not seem to be as enlightened. For instance, in a scene where Odun and Funmi, as newlyweds, converse in English before some of the townspeople entertained in his apartment, they look on with disbelief, as if they do not understand the couple’s language of communication. 

The final scene, where Femi dies of food poisoning, leaves behind a bit of ambiguity that is poetic. Whether it is the hypnotic charm that has turned deadly or it is the Farmer’s ghostly apparition that is responsible for Femi’s death, we do not know. But this duality of purpose makes for an intriguing tragic arc.

As an ambitious project, Farmer’s Bride interrogates the delicate intersections between love, responsibility and self-determination against the backdrop of traditional and modern influences. With the storytelling bearing an emotional and cultural weight, the film creates room for conversations around female agency, sociocultural expectations and the objectification of women in society. Unlike in Adire and Battle of Buka Street, where the imperfect female protagonists are offered the grace to overcome their predicament and learn from their flaws, Opukeme and Tijani’s film deprives the female protagonist of such an opportunity. She is consumed by the flames of her grave decisions, yet her struggle for a life of her own, as against dependency on cultural expectations of female identity and selfhood, remains as valid today as ever.

Farmer’s Bride premiered on Netflix on October 17th, 2025.