The Lagos love that struggles to speak its name

Daniel Nelson

All The Colours of the World Are Between Black and White is a quiet, tender love story set in Lagos.

There is none of the noise and rush of the Nigerian capital. Even in two brief street scenes in which small groups of men set on another, they are seen from afar and the raised voices can hardly be heard.

Yet the incidents are crucial, for they provide the dangerous backdrop to the potential lovers’ growing affection.

Bawa is a keen photographer, Bambino a delivery motorcycle driver. We know little about them, except that the reserved Bambino lives a simple life. He helps out a noisy neighbour in a wreck of a marriage but avoids involvement. There’s also a young woman, Ifeyinwa, who clearly has affection and trust and would like him “to be my first”, but there’s no chemistry on his part.

Bawa persuades Bambino to drive him around the city so he can take photographs for a competition. Friendship grows. They are at ease in each other’s company. Bawa obviously wants to push matters further. Bambino backs off: “We’re just friends. Do you understand?

This truly is the love that dare not speak its name, expressed in silence, in a glance, in a moment of common interest.

The wary, repressed Bambino makes a half-hearted attempt to be the man Ifeyinwa wants, but it doesn’t work. “You don’t really see me, do you?” she says piercingly as she extricates herself.

Their unsuccessful sexual encounter has far-reaching but understated consequences for both of them. Ifeyinwa’s subsequent rebound betrothal, and the neoighbour’s shouting-match marriage show that conventional heterosexual marriage comes with pitfalls.

This is a carefully crafted film, in which not a word or a shot is wasted. Much of the action takes place on the main character’s faces. It’s a fine debut from director Babatunde Apalowo. A wikipedia article says that “While studying at university, a friend of the director was, in front of him, lynched by a mob because of his sexual orientation, which initiated him to do a film with LGBT themes.”

He has turned a horrifying event into a subtle, sensitive, moving film.

* All The Colours of the World Are Between Black and White is showing at the Raindance Film Film Festival in London, 25 October- 4 November. Info: https://raindance.org/festival/