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Anyanji Theodore , director. Ada Mbano in London . 2014. 119 minutes. English, Igbo, and Pidgin. Nigeria. Divine Touch Productions. No price reported.
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Released in late 2014, Ada Mbano in London (2014), directed by Theodore Anyanji, represents one of the latest contributions to the burgeoning genre of Nollywood films set abroad. However, despite the obvious overlap in the titles, Ada Mbano in London is not a sequel to the famous Osuofia in London (dir. Kingsley Ogoro, 2003). While the homage to Ogoro's film is evident, this film takes the heroine, Adaure (also known as Ada Mbano), in her voyage from Lagos to London simply to "see more of the world"--to acquire a certain cosmopolitanism on the eve of her marriage to a worldly Nigerian senator. The character of Ada, as played by the Nollywood star Queen Nwokoye, is at the center of an expanding film series that started in 2012 with Anyaji's Adaure, a nearly shot-by-shot Igbo-language remake of his largely English-language Levels Don Change (2012), which stars Uche Elendu in the familiar role of a self-serving village girl who moves to the big city under the pretext of enrolling in university. With the intense, raspy-voiced Nwokoye replacing the relatively restrained Elendu, Adaure shifts even closer to the template set in Funke Akindele Jénífà series about a "razz village girl" who goes to Lagos, gets a makeover, and finds herself in deep trouble. While this feminized village-to-city trajectory is certainly a hallmark of Nollywood movies, one that dates all the way back to the groundbreaking Glamour Girls (dir. Chika Onukwufor, 1994), Jénífà gave the trope a fresh spin, courtesy of its inspired antics, which revive and extend certain performance techniques familiar from the Yorùbá theatrical tradition. If Nwokoye's performance style in Ada Mbano in London--the fifth film in the Adaure series--evokes that of Nkem Owoh (who played Osuofia), it does so through the mediating influence of the great Funke Akindele. However, where Jénífà's use of Yorùbá is entirely expected in the Yorùbá-language film, Ada's occasional bursts of Igbo are presented as eccentric interruptions in the largely English-language Ada Mbano in London, reflecting the investment of Anyanji's film in...