Samantha Mugatsia is a young Kenyan woman with her future all neatly planned: she will become a nurse and marry Neville Misati and have children and a middle class life. Then in walks Sheila Munyiva and they make a fumbling start towards a lesbian relationship.
Wanuri Kahiu's film isn't about the dreadful state of Africa that so many films have portrayed that continent throughout the history of the films. It's a love story, full of bright colors and parents and society -- opposing their union (homosexuality is still illegal in Kenya) their quest for happiness. It might as well have been Romeo and Mercutio, except that no one dies. Had it been a Hollywood movie set in New York, about a woman engaged to one man, falling in love with another, it would have been seen as puzzlingly banal in its plot; given its setting, it won numerous awards around the world. Isn't that sad?
Wanuri Kahiu's film isn't about the dreadful state of Africa that so many films have portrayed that continent throughout the history of the films. It's a love story, full of bright colors and parents and society -- opposing their union (homosexuality is still illegal in Kenya) their quest for happiness. It might as well have been Romeo and Mercutio, except that no one dies. Had it been a Hollywood movie set in New York, about a woman engaged to one man, falling in love with another, it would have been seen as puzzlingly banal in its plot; given its setting, it won numerous awards around the world. Isn't that sad?