#(This Is My Desire)

[whileiamdying]

Eyimofe (This Is My Desire): Floating Currencies

By Maryam Kazeeme ESSAYS — APR 26, 2022

The film exists within the tradition of African cinema, to which cultural critic and filmmaker Manthia Diawara ascribes two central themes, “social realism and colonial confrontation,” as well as within the larger tradition of “world cinema” that Lúcia Nagib has described as “cinema of the world” that “has no center.” The Esiris have noted that their film is heavily influenced by the New Taiwan Cinema, which is evident in the confident austerity of the camera as we journey through Lagos, shown in a way that balances social-realist and modernist aesthetics and echoes Edward Yang’s Taipei Story. Eyimofe may not seem to have much in common with the gaudy commercial movies usually associated with Nollywood, as Nigeria’s film industry is popularly known, with their accelerated and complex plotlines and, most often, characters that are either good or evil. But in fact, the film must be seen as part of both the Nigerian film industry (which extends beyond this monolithic perception) and world cinema. The Esiris are committed to realism and novelistic detail, and they masterfully transpose plotlines, people, and places that could very well exist in a commercial Nollywood movie into a style of filmmaking whose deliberate pace demands that we witness the various currencies being exchanged in the world of the film—discern their logic, feel what they cost to earn and to spend. Money is Eyimofe’s true villain. Within twenty-four hours of receiving a passport (with the name Sanchez, signaling to viewers that Mofe’s papers are legal-adjacent) and the unexpected deaths of his sister, Precious, and young nephews due to “something to do with the generator,” Mofe must spend. He must pay to keep their bodies at the hospital while he looks for more money to arrange their release. He must pay for their funerals, without the help of his estranged father (the late Sadiq Daba, compellingly infuriating). He must pay a lawyer to retrieve funds from Precious’s bank account that she had planned to give him for his travel documents. Throughout all this, Mofe shows patience. “It’s okay,” he responds to the nurse who informs him indifferently that the bodies of his family will be disposed of if he doesn’t pay. “It’s not okay. It’s not right,” his friend Abu insists.

“The Esiris’ camera is quite literally interested in the big picture, in asking: What means are truly available to Mofe and Rosa to attain the currency of self-determination?”

In the second chapter of the film, we meet Rosa face-to-face. We’ve seen her before at a distance—collecting water at a public tap, as Mofe returned home from work the night his sister and nephews died—but wouldn’t have known who she was. Here, she smiles softly for the camera; her visage, tilted in front of a fluttering white sheet for her passport photo, resets our visual palette, infuses us with energy—we’re hopeful this chapter will be different. While Rosa is much younger than Mofe, there’s a parallel in their sibling-oriented family structures. Rosa works hard to provide for herself and her teenage sister, Grace (Cynthia Ebijie), whom we meet when she is about four months pregnant. Rosa may not be estranged from her mother, but a perturbed glance at Grace when their mother calls to check in suggests that she doesn’t factor into Rosa’s decisions about her own and her sister’s day-to-day lives, nor into her vision for their Italian future.

We encounter new shades of Lagos—vibrant and lush—through Rosa, as she attempts to shift in and out of her class status, and often falls flat. Italy is on Rosa’s mind as she washes a customer’s hair at a salon and places Long Island iced tea orders for people at the trendy bar where she also works, some of whom happen to be friends of hers on the prowl for men with money. Grace, on the other hand, often laid out on a purple leopard-print pillow on their shared bed, wants only to watch videos and dance with her best friend. She does not want to get her passport photo, or the medicine for the health of her baby that Rosa struggles to afford. “If you don’t start behaving yourself, I’ll send you back,” Rosa threatens, scolding Grace through a mirror in the dark, as a neighbor’s generator pounds away. “Sorry,” Grace mutters, the camera’s focus on her reminding us that she is just a child acting out, using the little power, and pout, she has to resist her older sister’s plans. In the same luxe apartment building where Mofe works as a nighttime security guard, we are introduced to Mama Esther (comedian and wedding emcee Chioma “Chigul” Omeruah, in one of her first dramatic roles) through her mercurial voice, before we see her simultaneously ebullient and menacing expression. “So, you want to go to Italy?” she asks the sisters, followed by a slew of questions about Grace’s pregnancy. While Mama Esther and Rosa discuss logistics, Grace’s eyes are fixed on Mama Esther’s young daughter, playing with makeup in the foyer. Is Grace contemplating what it would be like to sit on the floor and play with makeup with her own child, or by herself? The lingering gaze on the girl and Grace’s childlike wonder invite us to consider both. When Rosa meets Peter (Jacob Alexander), a handsome Lebanese American, Italy seems to falter slightly in her mind. Dates to the beach and to rooftop restaurants show her something unfamiliar. But Peter’s wealthy friends berate him for dating Rosa, often right to her face. At the beach, not far enough out of Rosa’s earshot, his arrogant friend Seyi (Tomiwa Edun) callously jokes about the plight of being poor. “My father is in the hospital, and they won’t treat him until they get paid; maybe you can help,” he imitates mockingly—creating an ugly echo as we recall Mofe’s recent tribulations at the hospital, and anticipating Rosa’s own, soon to follow. 

Rosa must also contend with the idea that she is currency herself, as we see in her fending off the overtures of her landlord, Mr. Vincent (also Mofe’s landlord). She acquiesces to his desire for affection in exchange for help with her rent, and then, to get Mr. Vincent to leave her alone, she resorts to asking Peter to pay her rent. Grace, on the other hand, through her body, is literal currency. The Esiri brothers use Grace’s story, quietly and harrowingly, to draw our attention to the interconnectedness of human trafficking and illegal migration. “I swear I’ll give you my baby,” Grace tells Mama Esther, her hand stretched over a satin pouch of money that will soon be accompanied by her pubic hair, passport photo, and blood to seal the oath in exchange for Italian visas for the sisters. And whether Rosa wants to be currency or not, it seems by the end of her chapter that she won’t be able to escape that fate. 

Rosa’s and Mofe’s parallel stories are spatially intertwined, with many of their days unfolding around the same places, yet the writing doesn’t oversell their connectedness. It is Lagos that brings them together, and the Esiris give the city the time and space to reveal itself to us. When Rosa comes home from work late at night and we hear the hum of a generator in the distance while she covers the sleeping Grace with a red mosquito net, it seems plausible that this is the same evening Precious and her children die, possibly even the same faulty generator beating away. These subtle pieces of visual and sonic evidence of the proximity of Mofe’s and Rosa’s lives fill us with a thrill of longing to see them actually connected, even if just within a frame.

And why are things so difficult for Rosa and Mofe? Who is responsible? The Esiri brothers give us clues. The earliest moments of “Spain” are inundated with broken objects (the roller at the factory, Mofe’s green lamp, a table-tennis paddle, Precious’s television). This is how we come to understand the immediate lives of our characters—they need to get things working, using whatever tools are accessible, and to believe that nothing is past the point of repair. We hear talk on the radio of government officials in Nigeria outearning their U.S. counterparts, yet responsibility for what is broken in Eyimofe has to be pieced together. “Generator? We are finished,” Mr. Vincent says when Mofe tells him how his sister and nephews died. But not once do the Esiris spell out for us exactly what happened with the generator. Later, when Wisdom, Mofe’s younger associate from the factory, mentions “dirty fuel” as they hover over the same generator, Mofe doesn’t know much about it, even though that dirty fuel—which Europe sells to Nigeria because we don’t yet refine our own oil—was likely the cause of the deaths in his family. But Eyimofe is perhaps ultimately uninterested in blame. The Esiris’ camera is quite literally interested in the big picture, in asking: What means are truly available to Mofe and Rosa to attain the currency of self-determination? In the film’s epilogue, we return to Mofe. After being fired for destroying the junction boxes that nearly electrocuted him, he has been able to build something with money his father eventually shared from Precious’s estate. We take leave of Mofe similarly to the way we met him—in uniform, but this time his own. Standing beneath a sign for his new electronics repair shop—named Precious Repairs—Mofe offers assistance to the family he has left. “I’ll be checking in from time to time,” he says on the phone to his stepmother, who has pleaded with him for his help, as he and Wisdom carry a generator into the shop. Slivers of light peek between the slats of the iron door. We’re left wondering what happened to Rosa and Grace, as the Esiri brothers, in a quite befittingly Nigerian sentiment, ask us to believe in the currency of hope.

[abcexcite]

[great-and-small]

Apparently the local university’s undergraduate entomology course sends students to catch insect specimens at the same place I like to go birdwatching, which explains why I saw three enormous frat looking dudes with tiny bug nets and overheard one emphatically say “bro BRO I told you we already have enough lepidopterans”

[pussyslave]

[brucedinsman]

Today's Theme Song: Lord I give you my heart

    Artist: Hillsong Live album: “God Is In The House” (1996) “I Give You My Heart”(originally by Reuben Morgan) This is my desire to honor YouLord, with all my heart, I worship YouAll I have within me, I give You praiseAll that I adore is in YouLord, I give You my heartI give You my soul, I live for You aloneEvery breath that I take, every moment I’m awakeLord, have Your way in meThis is my…

[dewdropdraws]

He does this in the cave breakroom

[gibbearish]

love when ppl defend the aggressive monetization of the internet with "what, do you just expect it to be free and them not make a profit???" like. yeah that would be really nice actually i would love that:)! thanks for asking

[bulldog-butch]

i’m gonna say something controversial yet brave: sexuality labels are a convenient tool we use to define something that is undefinable

[creekfiend]

what's my biggest pet peeve well it's when someone makes a text post on tumblr dot com in which they are trying to romanticize the notion of the livestock guardian dog but they don't know the distinction between a livestock guardian dog and a herding dog and also they've never met a livestock guardian dog and do not realize what their attitudes towards the sheep that they protect actually are

[maddiesfreaky]

[fiftyshadesof420]

[abcexcite]

[coinc4t]

tie me up and leave me for dead

[massive-naturalbreasts4u]

[devilish-moan]