Multiple award-winning film-maker Shirley Frimpong-Manso’s latest movie-Grey Dawn which will start showing in Accra from Friday, 13th February, 2015 takes a big shot at interesting but contrasting human endeavours; politics, family, genuine relationships and illicit affair.
It may seem a little too much to have these strong though conflicting desires come to play in a single movie—however, with her excellent story telling prowess, Shirley Frimpong-Manso succeeds in finding a competing but salient grounds for all these things which have become part and parcel of our human existence.
The movie defines the grounds and boundaries for these human desires but at the end of it all, it becomes obvious which amongst the competing interests takes that single important stage in the lives of the main characters.
Anyone who has seen many of Shirley Frimpong-Manso’s movies wouldn’t struggle to extract from her films that she is more of an idealists (sociological sense)—and her ‘utopian’ society was once again vivid on screen. By ‘utopian’ society, I mean an African society where a politician is indeed honourable with some sort of conscience in place.
The Storyline…
In ‘Grey Dawn’, a Government Minister (Harold Davis) played by Bimbo Manuel is fixed between using his position to help his father-in-law stay out of jail for tax evasion or allow the law to take its course with him.
Harold Davis’ decision pulls in his wife’s anger (Jessica Davis played by Funlola Aofiyebi-Raimi), worsened by the fact that the stress of the case eventually led to Jessica’s father untimely death.
The anger of Jessica alone would have been bearable for Harold Davis but to watch on helplessly as he begins to loose his wife to the company of a young handsome man—who offers Jessica that perfect wormhole from her darkness into a world of art and music begins to challenge his position as a man, a father and a husband.
This is where it gets pretty interesting…
As Jessica is taken into a different world of artistry beauty and temporal peace merged with fun; the same wormhole began to pull her returnee daughter into its deep space—this time, made easy by the fact that Jessica’s daughter (Flora Mends played by Sika Osei) had the same obsessions which dwell in the works of this strange man (Jack played by Marlon Mave) whose works and ‘oomph’ had already consumed Jessica.
I wouldn’t want to box this into the concept of utopianism but it’s difficult to find a society where a woman who is married to a prominent Minister of State would run after a somewhat ‘broke’ painter who does not measure on the social ladder…
Of course the above is capable of happening, especially when the woman has been hurt and care no more about those things we regarded as valuable or socially relevant—in such cases, she yearns for the simplest of things which she would normally pay no attention to. And this is exactly the position we find Funlola Aofiyebi-Raimi’s character…
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