JULY 12TH - THE MOVIE REVIEW

Happy New Year Readers. I know some of you might be wondering why I haven't posted anything since the first week of December, oh well I took a break and I'm back with this exclusive review of the Movie July 12th.

JULY 12^TH: WHAT LIES IN DEATH?

'Love is a form of pain. It is a drug: it could get you high and watch you fall really low. It can keep you in a limbo and serve you difficult questions on the platter of a quest. It is in those moments when you hunger for the answers that you become someone else, a monster, a human being, or simply a skeptic perhaps worst of all, dead. This is what Inala Felix's July 12^th: The Movie directed by Onome Egba stages in the mind of the viewers but you can never be too sure because in the game of love and mental health, there is not a single stable story as every thought in you asks: what do you believe?

Starring Chinonso Ukah as Jumoke and Tony as Doctor Oche, July 12th brings to life the imaginative coherence in the script by Don Ekama. It begins with what we see as a suicide attempt after Jumoke finds herself in a hospital and jumps over the railings of a staircase to a bed and is visibly dead with blood all over. The short film keeps a steady doze of suspense after its opening montage as it recounts the events which led to this occurrence. The film is thrifty with details and quite discrete with dialogue and you can appreciate the visage of Doctor Oche's frustration as he envisages that some mysterious event would occur on a certain date which we can conclude is the 12^th of July.

What leads to that day is simple but a complex piece in the puzzle because the viewer has to become a detective if they must unravel the mystery of July the 12^th: such events as Jumoke in an emotional dilemma while her friends or fiends along the line argue on the state of her marriage with regards to her husband’s absence and possible infidelity. What is certain is the reality of the pang of her inability to decipher this so she moves to find out.

When Jumoke gets to the house, accompanied by Chinedu Chiemerie Grace and Adeshina Adetoun Inemobong as Lara and Vera respectively, she sees her husband with a young lady but does she really see? Perhaps she’s blinded by love but we may never know. What we know (because the cinematographer shows us) is that Jumoke is a woman in pain. In her we see that love is pain. It is a key but it unlocks misery and tears. Love is shadow that wears black and is a blurred vision. So sometimes, love doesn’t have a spare key and must improvise because love spies on spouses. Love is in rage and love is the jealous type. Love is a thick emotion; a knife to the heart like the Jumoke who stabs the mistress but the viewer isn’t convinced because the knife is not bloody when picked up by her husband and there is no terror. So what is happening?

July 12^th tells you what it must and the rest is left for you to decide on serious issues of suicide, marital collapse and possible mental illness as the result because she is taken to a psychiatric hospital. Eureka! Perhaps the aim of the movie is to leave us with the notion that no plot on mental illness, health practitioner incompetence and marital imbalance has a definite end and unless we, as humans, stand up to these issues they would be our doom. If this is the aim, then July 12^th painted its image and we can stare and each cut our piece of the beautiful canvas or for colloquial bliss: catch our sub.

While I am not strongly convinced with the effects of blood when Jumoke falls in the flashback, I am assured that there is point of excellence in the portrayal and resolute that there is no piece which can readily be flawless because flawless has a flaw too. So it ends with Jumoke washing her hands even though they are still stained with blood and this is coupled with the appearance of her two friends; we are left to ask more questions. The film answers our questions with questions: by asking the right questions best contextual and peculiar to individual readership. July 12^th is a mystic piece.'

Reviewed by : OLATUNDE OBAFEMI .

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