Tiwa Savage’s Water and Garri, which is named after the singer’s 2021 EP, marks her filmmaking debut as executive producer, under her production company Everything Savage. The Afrobeats diva has previously appeared in supporting roles in MTV Shuga Naija Season 3 and the Nigerian stage adaptation of For Colored Girls. Here, in Water and Garri, she plays the lead role of Aisha, a fashion designer who, following a family bereavement, returns from the US to Eastside, her fictional hometown, ten years after being away. Aisha settles in quickly, with the help of her cousin Stephany, in the neighborhood that is now rife with violence and crime. Her return comes with a disturbing past as she remembers her brother Mide, killed in a gunshot, and reunites with an ex-boyfriend, Kay, who still craves her company. In-between its story, the film spotlights love, trauma, pain, struggles and social realities like gun violence, hooliganism and police brutality.
The opening quote of the film suggests love and pain, two contradictory terms, are as compatible as water and garri. This ironic point is the first reference to the title and whets the ground for the bittersweet narration. The second reference is somewhere in the middle of the story, in a flashback, during a conversation between young Aisha and her grandmother. The woman advises her daughter against losing sight of the water of life, love, while facing the harsh part of life, garri— but these words of advice are just as stale as the character that delivers them without gusto.
For most parts of the story, Aisha is seen gallivanting around with Kay, like someone without ambition and plan, as she makes little attempts to keep the bereaved Stephany company. Besides, it doesn’t seem like Stephany has lost someone dear to her because the film brushes past any detail of her brother’s death which prompted Aisha’s return home. With the focus on Aisha and her emotional baggage, scenes of the film move back and forth between past and present, attempting to connect the dots between a nostalgic past and a needless present. Then, the ease with which Aisha warms up to Kay, after ten years of being apart, is questionable. Is it to say that she never had a boyfriend in the US in whom she had invested her emotions?
The film also fails to convince us that Aisha’s past experience in Eastside is far more desirable than her present. Mide’s penchant for street life and the circumstances of his death prove that the place already has a history of violence and gang culture. If anything has changed, it’s probably that there is more violence. Why, then, does Aisha act as if she has never known violence in Eastside?
Tiwa Savage’s character in Water and Garri lacks life and energy. Except for her star power, the Afrobeats diva has no business playing the lead role. Her performance comes off as dismal, with her character often failing to show emotions of grief, longing, joy and homesickness where necessary in the film. In the opening scene where she identifies the shot thief as her brother’s killer, her narrative voice is flat and unemotional, which sets the film off on a wrong note. Most characters in the film are poorly sketched, too, which leaves behind a lot of unanswered questions about their personalities and motivations. Stephany and Aisha do not seem to have any more family members around, which raises questions about the exploration of their personal lives. Not much is known about Kay’s career and ambitions beyond his acclimatization with street life, yet the career-driven Aisha, with her American exposure, is made to stoop so low as to fall in love with him again. This makes no sense, given the hypergamous nature of women. We do not even know what status or position Kay holds to command the respect of other street boys. Later on, when Kay is murdered, the motivation behind his death isn’t known either.
The silver lining in Water and Garri is its colorful cinematography, championed by Camilo Monsalve Ossa, and cross-cultural bearing. Shot in Ghana, the film stars both Nigerian and Ghanaian actors, with Ghana’s Andrew Yaw-Buntin playing Kay, and Nigeria’s Jemima Osunde and Mike Afolarin embodying Stephany and Mide respectively. But then, the cultural identity of the fictional Eastside isn’t properly defined. Tiwa Savage speaks Yoruba a number of times in the film, while another character, one of the street boys, speaks Fante, a Ghanaian language. The place is most likely a linguistic and ethnic melting pot, barring real-life geographical boundaries.
If what you want is a good story with proper character development, Water and Garri is a hassle to watch. Meji Alabi’s debut as a feature film director does not help the poor script. The project is literally the cinematic version of “garri” and “water” without sugar and any other condiments: a gritty, sour filmic paste.
