‘Lady’ Review: In Lagos, A Taxi Driver Hopes To Trade Dirty Money For Freedom [Sundance]

For her debut feature, the Nigerian-born director and screenwriter Olive Nwosu decided to depict her birthplace, Lagos, with admirable complexity. As the film’s protagonist, Lady (Jessica Gabriel’s Ujah), navigates the city’s traffic-choked streets in her rickety red SUV, viewers witness the brutal beauty of this oceanside metropolis, where a booming informal economy pushes most citizens to the margins. The downside is that Lagos is a more interesting character in this film than Lady herself, who Nwosu outlines with far less finesse. Such a glaring imbalance is symptomatic of the script’s overall flimsiness, which stands in contrast to this debut’s heartfelt performances and staggering visuals.

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The film opens upside-down, as a young Lady and her childhood best friend, Pinky, dangle their heads over a dock. When Lady goes to find her mother, an unsettling sight in a nearby shack disturbs her youthful revelry. Flash forward to today, where Lady, unsmiling and androgynous, hustles to care for her grandmother and make ends meet. As the cost of fuel increases and working-class resentments simmer to a boiling point, Lady seems content to keep her head down and work harder. So when Pinky (Amanda Oruh), who left without a word five years ago, waltzes back into her life with a business proposition, Lady stifles her resentment and listens.

Pinky is a prostitute, and her pimp is looking for a driver to take his ladies around to their jobs. (His last driver “just disappeared,” apparently.) Lady earns the pimp’s respect by shouting him down — #girlboss! — negotiates a high salary, and starts saving money to abscond to Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone, where she’s always dreamed of living. But the gig takes a toll on the psyche. Lagos is not a woman’s world, and it’s unsafe for Lady to be out alone at night, waiting for the girls to finish their jobs. At the same time, she doesn’t want to be anywhere near her boss’s clients. Although her fellow taxi drivers deride her for being female, Lady carries herself with hardened masculinity, rapping at her reflection in the mirror and wearing a hat embroidered with “FUCK YOU” to psych herself up for her new job.

As this film’s sex-repulsed protagonist is forced into close proximity with sex, one might expect things to get more interesting, not less. But all of the buildup in the first half leads to minimal payoff, unless one counts expected outcomes and cliches as payoff. Perhaps most vexingly, nobody will be shocked to learn what the traumatic early experience alluded to in that opening scene was when it is eventually revealed — the shack was literally a-rockin’ when Lady came knockin’ — but nothing more is done to explain Lady’s neurosis. Since her edge doesn’t stem from anywhere satisfying or believable, it reads more like hollow posturing than a legitimate character trait, especially as the character’s feminine name is repeated ad nauseam.

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That’s not to say that Ujah isn’t a revelation, because she is: her performance remains grounded and affecting, even as the script veers into melodrama. She is an undeniably compelling focus for Alana Mejía González’s camera, as the cinematographer reverently captures the mansions, highways, and seaside shanties of Lagos. “Lady” is nothing if not beautiful, the world of Nigeria’s most populous city painstakingly rendered. It is apparent that Nwosu cares about this place, even if she’s populated it with thinly drawn characters. Pinky is as essential as Lady in the film’s final moments, if not more so, and we know even less about her than we do about the main character.

As the plot of “Lady” stumbles to its climax and emotional ending, big, admirable ideas — and an awe-inspiring crowd scene — take center stage. Sadly, with no backstory to prop these characters up, their choices feel unearned, almost random. Nwosu shows true visionary promise, and “Lady” offers a glimpse into a world rarely depicted on screen. This is an admirable debut, but it ironically loses sight of its characters as its humanitarian message develops. Surely viewers will agree that Lagosians like Lady are getting a raw deal — but why does Nwosu want them to spend 90 minutes with her in particular? [C-]

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Lena Wilson

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