The South African and Nigerian love story in Soft Love is put into motion once Zandi`’s groom runs away on the morning of their wedding, setting up a tale of romance, friendship and family that is anything but soft. We are taken on a journey set mostly in South Africa (and other times in Nigeria) where Zandi meets Edward Obi (played by Efa Iwara), a Nigerian photographer, after her unfortunate runaway groom incident and the love story that ensues.
A rom-com debut directed by Holmes Awa that missteps on both the rom and the com, Soft Love tries to explore what love means to a main character we never really get to know. Sometimes it takes a step into an interesting angle and then retreats as if scared of any kind of discovery. Early on we see that Zandi has built a career on social media with her runaway groom and when he comes back after the wedding, her immediate response is to find the perfect angle for her audience. You would assume that the film would interrogate the performance of love for the internet but it never really fully goes there, playing those moments as plot points and nothing more.
The moments between Zandi and Edward start with her trying to unsuccessfully save him from being robbed and they clash—as many romcoms often start—before their love blossoms. This moment is a great setup but the film fires the moment-of -attraction shot too early and too obviously. The delicate act of balancing, of push and pull for key romcom moments is constantly off and many times it puts the horse before the cart—Edward goes `Instagram official` before any kind of conversation.
Soft Love continues its missteps with much of the emotional work of transformation throughout the film falling on Zandi. She commits time and resources to the relationship with Edward—helping him raise money for his exhibition—putting herself in vulnerable moments and pushing for important conversations while all Eddy does is take pictures and fight with his family in Nigeria—a B plot that was sometimes funny and other times unnecessary. We never get a sense of why Eddy likes her, we don’t get a peek into the unique ways love can exist between two people, instead we get generic romantic beats without sufficient work—the paint scene comes to mind. The film also pushes Zandi to many moments of commitment culminating in a moment of reconciliation orchestrated solely by her with no major change in Eddy—it also doesn’t help that he’s not charismatic enough to sell it.
The moments that shine are short and sometimes don’t involve the main couple. Zandi`’s friendship with TK (her best friend played by Rosemary Zimu) is warm and dynamic, TK`s fiery energy complimenting her nervous overthinking. We also get a moment of cultural exchange where Zandi and Edward share a plate of garri and okra soup. It felt like a window into the character giving him some kind of dimension or even cultural tension between both of them. The film also shines on a visual scale: it is colourful without being sickening and the direction is competent enough.
Soft Love joins the ranks of rom-coms where the woman undergoes an emotional transformation for a man that almost never changes and when Zandi goes on her monologue about the evolving meaning of love to her, you can’t help but wonder if her happily ever after might be shortlived.
Soft Love screened at NollywoodWeek (NOW) Film Festival 2025. Available to stream on Prime Video.
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Side Musings
- First film that came to my mind while watching this was Namaste Wahala and let’s just be grateful that affliction did not rise the second time.
- Zandi and Eddy get into bed with paint all over their body, I can’t imagine how uncomfortable that must have felt.
- The twist with Zandi`s ex felt like a bad joke at first but it came back to be a warm moment towards the end, even though she still did most of the work for him finding himself.
