Mother of George

★★★ 

Dir: Andrew Dosunmu

(2013) 

The beautifully shot Mother of George takes a look at fascinating and cinematic culture, little seen in American cinema, using it's performances to lift this somewhat melodramatic film above its script. Nigerian newly weds Nike and Ayo (Danai Gurira and Isaach De Bankolé) are happy-go-lucky in their new life together. Ayo works as a chef with his brother Biyi (Tony Okungbowa) so Nike doesn't have to. She walks the streets of New York at odds with the culture somewhat more than her Americanized friend Sade (Yaya Alafia) but when the couple find they are unable to conceive a child Nike is cornered by the pressure of her own.

Andrew Dosunmu and Ain't The Bodies Saints cinematographer Bradford Young create a beautiful colourful world, filled with bright African costume and red and blue lights, slow motion street shots and powerful mood. It's a film that Christopher Doyle and Wong Kar Wai may have made 20 years ago in China but this is a unique world, a culture with generations of pressure, pride and character. Nike's plight is one which may be the fault of her husbands infertility but his manhood could not be taken into question within the realms of their family. The pressure to take matters into her own hands in fact comes from an incredible source but ultimately it's what leads to the more basic and overly melodramatic aspects of Dosunmu's beautiful film.

Gurira and De Bankolé are fantastic as Nike and Ayo but the broken last 20 minutes feels rushed and over scripted. It could be written as such based on the cultural actions of a Nigerian family but for all of the beautiful shots in Mother of George the heavy dramatisation of Nike's woes become slightly repetitive and a little too blunt. Melodrama aside though Dosunmu lets us into a world which I for one have rarely seen up on the big screen; And what a colourful and beautiful world it is.