Fiyin Gambo’s “The Other Side of the Bridge” Gets Handicapped by Bland and Convoluted Writing

If you have seen Ryan Coogler’s Creed or its promotional content prior to watching Fiyin Gambo’s The Other Side of the Bridge, there’s an unmistakable sense of familiarity that lingers throughout the film. From the choice of sport, characters’ choices, and motivation (mostly that of Femi (Demi Banwo), the kinship is undeniable. The film, however, has a point of departure. The story is dedicated and partly inspired by the late Efunmi Omowunmi Olubanwo, Banwo, the film’s lead mother. 

Gambo’s The Other Side of the Bridge is a portrait of Banwo’s personal story. The film is dedicated to the loving memory of his mother and the quiet and overwhelming devastation that greets the loss of a loved one. It meditates on how grief sits in one’s chest years after tragedy strikes. Femi, played by Banwo, loses his sense of purpose and direction after his mother’s death. That disorientation is temporarily suspended when a boxing competition, the Tobi Giwa’s Titan Tournament, announces itself. Boxing, to Femi, isn’t just an outlet for pain but closure since his late mother introduced him to the sport. On the other side of the bridge is Farouk (Tobi Bakre), an uneducated but focused and brilliant boxer dealing with the complexities of adulthood: a demanding landlord, financial hardship, an expectant wife, Toke (Gbubemi Ejeye), and the pressure of following a dream. The film brings the two characters together in the boxing ring. By exchanging blows, losing teeth and blood, each finds a semblance of comfort and an answer to their varying troubles. 

Tobi Bakre and Demi Banwo in The Other Side of the Bridge

From Old to New Nollywood, the Nigerian film industry, like its global counterpart, has pondered the often-parasitic relationship between the rich and the poor. This class tension and relations are subtly introduced in The Other Side of the Bridge through sport commentary centered on the social class Femi and Farouk belong to. The commentary is reflective of the social dynamic that exists between rich and working-class Nigerians. Although the film brings the two opposing classes together, the writing doesn’t allow for philosophical musing around the political, cultural, and economic conditioning that capitalism enforces on the elite and working-class citizens. In The Other Side of the Bridge, the film is less interested in understudying the underlying tension between the rich and the poor. What it does is to show the parallel between the distinct characters and the world, and allow for a quasi-relationship to fester.

Femi is the archetypal spoiled rich kid. There’s a begrudgingly loving father, a stable and progressive company, and a support system in Coach Bola (Ireti Doyle). But these economic and psychological comforts provide hollow shields. Tamara Aihie and Emil Garuba, the writers, possibly obsessed with Coogler’s Creed, are unable to present him as a character to be empathetic about. The writing presents him as just another regular, boring, and bland rich kid pinning for attention. It attempts to, but it doesn’t understand the complexities of his interior life and pain. This doesn’t serve the story despite the innate potential that Femi’s story holds. This convoluted writing also explains why one roots for Farouk to win over Femi. Farouk’s winning of the tournament is more significant than Femi’s. For Farouk, the prize money accentuates his decades-long dream, supports his family, and, importantly, boosts the dreaming capacity of fellow dreamers in his working-class community. 

In 2003, Sofia Coppola released Lost in Translation, a slow-burning drama featuring Bob Harris, a fading movie star, and Charlotte, a young woman adrift in her marriage, as they find a tender connection amidst the imposing loneliness of a new city. The film carries autobiographical elements from Coppola and Spike Jonze’s botched marriage. Although Coppola has stated that the film isn’t a direct portrait of their marriage and divorce, the elements of their shared experience are there. What’s remarkable is how Coppola transforms a private grievance into something generous and melancholic. The film, which won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay, confidently draws on Coppola’s interior life and presents the texture of loneliness one finds within intimacy. 

A decade later, Spike Jonze made Her, a semi-autobiographical and sci-fi project rooted in his divorce from Coppola. The film, through Twombly, presents the story of a lonely man falling for an AI. What the film presents is the story of a man who doesn’t know how to grieve a relationship, who pours intimacy into forms that feel safer than real human vulnerability. Both films, anchored on private moments from their filmmakers, show the possibility of cinema as a visual medium to articulate unarticulated and repressed emotions. 

Gambo’s The Other Side of the Bridge has the potential to transform private grief into monumental art until the writing fails it. The writing consistently fails in providing a logical and emotional explanation for Femi’s prolonged grief over his late mother. Perhaps the trouble lies in wanting to integrate Banwo’s personal tragedy into the film. Occasionally, the logic of his tears and all don’t follow that of the writing. But you could sense the captured grief in his tears, reluctant movement, and words. The underdog story: the troubled child who keeps beating his peers and needs an outlet, a comfortable but unsatisfied person. 

Performance-wise, the actors bring a reckless surrender into their roles. For Bakre, he wears the appearance and moves with the unsteady resolve of a working-class Nigerian man who has refused to be bullied by his economic and psychological burden. His monologue, which recalls Chioma Akpotha’s monologue in Jade Osiberu’s Gangs of Lagos, laid bare his decades-long unexpressed anger. It’s raw, messy, and emotionally demanding. That Bakre and Banwo spent a year learning boxing is believable. There are punches and movements to justify that. In Banwo’s performance, you could sense the captured grief in his tears, reluctant movement and words. 

In The Other Side of the Bridge, there are bone-shifting punches and blood, but also heart and musings around familial relationship and the effect of its brokenness on a child.