A little over halfway into Shall We Meet Tonight, a short film written and directed by Wapah Ezeigwe, there is a quietly charged scene. The main character, Adaora (Goodness Emmanuel), is standing still, wearing just her underwear, as Susanna (Uzoamaka Onuoha) sensually takes her measurement. It is the one moment of private romance that they have stolen as two women in love in Nigeria and a core scene in the film that follows Adaora, about to marry a man she doesn’t love, and her secret romance with Susanna.
Shall We Meet Tonight is quite simple in its narrative. The story doesn’t unfurl in any new ways and, honestly, it might quickly leave the mind upon first viewing. The characters also never find any depth in the short time we are with them; we never get a sense of Adaora and Susanna’s romantic history and how it reached the point we see. But that scene mentioned earlier holds an important place in the film and the portrayal of same sex relationships in Nigerian films in general—especially for women.
Adaora and Susanna, sharing silence as only a breath separates their longing bodies, is such a stark and refreshing difference from the supposed acts of longing we see in our mainstream films. It also helps differentiate this heated relationship from the coldness of the one she has with the man she is about to marry.
At the beginning of the film, we see her body stiffen at the touch of her forcefully betrothed, Ejiofor (Jasperwills Ebuka). The acting is sometimes unrefined and in need of a few more takes, but we get to see her averse to any affection or compliments from the man, deflecting and avoiding them. The prospect of marriage is already a theft of personhood for many women, then add the layer of queerness and we have a suppression that chooses supposed safety over true existence. This makes for an open-ended but heartbreaking ending to the film.
Shall We Meet Tonight is simple and flawed—the sound design is inconsistent and the characters shallow—but in a landscape that often renders queer women invisible or doomed, its existence is both necessary and enough.
Shall We Meet Tonight screened at the BFI FLARE LGBTQ+ Film Festival in London.
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Side Musings
- Setting the film in “Eastern Nigeria” made me chuckle. They could have just picked a state.
- They seemed to be enjoying the food at the dinner scene so much that I almost wanted to have a taste of the food.
