Although only one type of relationship in Babatunde Apalowo’s All the Colours of the World Are Between Black and White will get all of the attention, there are actually two romances in the film. The invariably spurned heterosexual one and the tenderly conveyed gay one. The man in the middle of both, Bambino (a strikingly competent Tope Tedela) isn’t exactly confused; rather he is caught up in the kind of affection he doesn’t want to feel. You get the feeling that he would rather be left alone. But damn these feelings. And, maybe above that, damn his country Nigeria, where there is an anti-gay law.
It is established pretty early that Bambino is not one of the colorful elites that abound in Nigerian cinema. His neighbourhood is a poor one and he delivers things for people on his bike. One day, he meets Bawa (David Ariyo), who asks him to put on his helmet so that he can take a picture. It seems like a gesture with meaning: one man asks another to put on a mask so that he can better appreciate him. As time goes by, both men become closer. Meanwhile, back home, a young girl named Ifeyinwa (delightful lively newcomer Martha Ehinome Orhiere) has taken a shine to Bambino.
There is a fair bit of stolidity to the choreography of courtship Bambino and Bawa play. It is maybe a chemistry thing, or it is maybe an environmental thing: there are people around. You can’t just be holding hands on the street. In a scene that isn’t the most well done, Apalowo hints at the violence that could result should passersby become aware of a gay individual. It is an on-the-nose bit of context that feels cheap. But thankfully, this is a film that handles itself a lot better than that particular scene.
As filmed by David Wyte, All the Colours is dour and cinematic. Although, this being a film from Nigeria, it has chosen a level of mutedness hardly seen in the average Nigerian film. The ambient volume is low, the gestures are undramatic, and there seems to be a patina of dust on several scenes; gone is Nollywood’s love for colours.
And yet, somehow this only makes the film even more authentically Nigerian. What Apalowo gets impeccably right is the nature of a certain kind of Nigerian poverty, the type that afflicts the literate but unfortunate, the decent English speaker, the hapless but hopeful young. Take the jobs of the leads: a deliveryman and a betting store caretaker, two jobs that require a certain level of competence but seem below whatever educational backgrounds these two characters might have. The production design is just as accurate: you see the stained walls, the cramped apartment, the cheap curtains, the crooked concrete stairs.
The film is also out of step with the prevailing lust for sex scenes in recent Nigerian cinema. The sole sex scene here is an awkward one: perhaps the closest it gets to portraying gay sex is hands massaging a naked torso and a soundtrack suggesting intimate relations between the leads. A lot of these tender scenes recall the intimacies in Wong Kar-wai’s In the Mood for Love.
Along with its commentary on same-sex love, All the Colours says something about the way a badly managed country affects both the broad outlines of its poorest citizen’ lives, along with the specifics of those lives. For instance, it is unclear whether Bambi has any plans to escape his deliveryman job —although there is no law against leaving jobs, the structure of Nigerian upward mobility is too complex for those on the lowest rung of class. That is an indirect result of his country’s leadership. But the complexity of expressing his desire, latent as it is, is a direct result of laws against that desire. It is a sad-sack life of small pleasures and few delights and Bambino’s creed is a denial, denial, denial. Apalowo’s own creed is authenticity. He has produced a film of undeniable merit. It is a near-masterpiece.
Director: Babatunde Apalowo
Screenplay: Babatunde Apalowo
Cinematography: David Wyte
Editing: Babatunde Apalowo
Colourists: Matt Mahmood-Ogston, Josh Borrill
Sound: Bankole Adedoyin
Production Companies: Polymath Pictures, 2o9ine Films, Creative Blacks Production, Realm360 Productions
Venue: Berlinale (Panorama)
In English
93 minutes
