“The Farmer’s Daughter”: Omoni Oboli Attempts to Reach for Nollywood’s Golden Age

For quite some time, fans of Nollywood have been longing for (a return to) the production of Nollywood that marked the period between the late 1990s and the early 2000s. A period one could arguably refer to as the golden age of Nollywood. Movies of that age were marked by near-genuine acting, memorable storylines, remarkable casting, now-iconic characters and moving scores. There was less emphasis on glossy settings, opulent costumes, polished language, and the carefully manufactured aesthetics that dominate many contemporary productions. Movies were essentially down-to-earth and depended more on the power of their delivery and the efficacy of the story. It is this goal that Omoni Oboli attempts to reach for in her latest, The Farmer’s Daughter.

The Farmer’s Daughter follows Chima Madu (Chris Attoh), a man trying to escape the grief of losing his daughter (Angel, Jolomi Omobonike), after the collapse of his marriage. Burdened by grief and afflicted by the machinations of his wife, Ifeoma (Angel Ufuoma), he flees to a village, where he encounters a man with dementia and his devoted caregiver, his daughter. Ensconced away in this village, he tries to pick up his life, but he is struck by fresh legal threats and character assassination at the hands of his wife in the city. A romantic drama through and through, Omoni Oboli and her co-producer, Tomesa Deoye, walk us through familiar realities and themes — of manipulation, betrayal, grief, healing, curse, the renewed quest for survival, the pull between the rural and the urban, and (the triumphance of) love.

The love trope, so to say, of a wealthy or affluent man falling in love with a village or lowly girl is one that tolls for many of us who were raised on Nollywood’s golden age, which was also a time when Nollywood was rife with romantic drama. Movies like Super Love — starring Ramsey Nouah, a prince who returns to his village and unexpectedly falls for a young woman (Genevieve Nnaji)—Violated (1996), Final Whistle (2000) are some of the popular Nollywood movies of this form. In The Farmer’s Daughter, Chima is the “city boy” from Lagos, the “big and complex city,” while Morenikeji (Detola Jones) is the ‘village girl’ or ‘local girl’ who is unable to further her education in the University, restricted to her life as a caregiver to her old, demented father.

Oboli is not new to the subgenre of romance-based films. In fact, watching Oboli is almost an exercise in romcoms, romance and love—Love in Every Word, The One Who Stole My Heart, Love is War are under her belt. According to her, her preoccupation with the romance subgenre is to make films that make people “feel good.” The Farmer’s Daughter differs with the incursion of the rural, the lifestyle of the rural and the homage to the proponents of the form.
Like many romantic dramas of its kind, the plot tugs at the heart, and the cast delivers performances that leave a fairly convincing impression. Chima’s grief comes through convincingly at several points in the film. Likewise, Morenikeji’s initial unreceptiveness toward him at her father’s homestead, Baba Morenikeji’s (Monsuru Ijayegbemi) dementia-stricken mannerisms, and Barrister Ojukwu’s concern for Chima’s plight are all portrayed with some measure of sincerity.

The film begins in media res, in the middle of Chima’s dilemma. We are confronted with a grieving and fleeing Chima, bus-bound for a place we would later know as Olobun village, the news of a drowned three-year-old girl and rumours about how her father—whom we can speculate to be Chima—must have devised her as a propitiation for his booming wealth. This scene is followed by a mournful scene in an affluent house. They are the bereaved, his wife, Ifeoma (Angel Ufuoma), her mother, and her aunt. These details are thrust into our knowing, but we are spurred by what we do not know: Did Chima kill his child? Where is he headed? And, briefly, is he truly the son of the demented villager?

Now and then, the narrative is interspaced with flashbacks to bridge the two worlds of Chima’s life: the traumatic city past and the healing village present. Motifs (like water, grief, death, loss, etc.) that run parallel to his past trauma and his new environment collide. They hold up a mirror for us to see that his present life in the village is a struggle to deal with his past and to further understand his “guilt”. The device of flashback is a hallmark of 1990s and early 2000s Nigerian cinema. Flashbacks were frequently used to unravel the cause of a character’s current suffering, to empathize with the hero’s internal battle, and to reconcile moments together.

Unlike the romantic dramas of Nollywood’s golden age, Oboli’s characters struggle with their speech patterns and dialect. Characters such as Morenikeji, Pa Dayo, and the two envious women are portrayed as natives of Olobun, a remote village in Abeokuta, yet their delivery of the Yoruba language is often unconvincing. At several points, their articulation lacked the natural rhythm and texture expected of true locals. One of such instances is where a customer approaches Morenikeji to purchase vegetables from her; she tells the customer, “mo fun yiin FISI”, which translates to “I have given you extra amounts.” No native speaker of the language expresses it that way; it is more natural for a native speaker to say “mo ti fi kuun” // “mo fisi fuun yii” and other similar variants. The customer’s accent also comes off as unconvincing, and at one point switches to English. It is curious to imagine an encounter between two villagers where they are unable to hold a dialogue in their own language.

In another scene, in their attempt to have their moments with Chima, the women who are envious of Morenikeji invited Chima to see “the richness of their culture.” That expression is arguably unreflective of villagers, indeed. It is important to reflect on this because it is exhausting enough pleading with foreign producers to present Nigeria and Africa’s language and speech patterns properly when our own producers fail to do justice when it comes to the same issue.

Although The Farmer’s Daughter is not particularly original in style or themes and subject matter, it is still worth seeing. The parallel between rural and urban life reminds us of the importance of both worlds. And, the themes it reflects upon remain emotionally accessible. More importantly, the film succeeds in recalling a period of Nollywood when storytelling relied on the sincerity of emotions.