Writer and Director: Babatunde Apalowo
This Nigerian love story sometimes seems naïve especially when the music soars and the camera finds an empty park bench to symbolise absence. However, at other times Babatunde Apalowo’s film is so delicate that the ache of desire and the burden of loneliness is palpable in the framed painterly shots of its two male protagonists caught in the love that dare not speak its name.
Bambino is a despatch driver in Lagos. He lives alone, but his neighbour’s adult daughter often comes to visit. She’s about to be wed in an arranged marriage but prefers Bambino. He’s gentle and quiet. They spend their evenings reading books at his table in his small flat where the walls are so thin that they can hear other couples arguing into the night.
One day, Bambino has to deliver something to a new betting shop that has opened. Its owner is an amateur photographer and begins snapping pictures of Bambino in his motorcycle helmet. The two men become friends and Bambino drives the photographer – never named – on the back of his bike around Lagos to take pictures of the cityscapes.
Immediately, there is danger in their relationship as the film begins with a homophobic attack, shot subtly in the background when Bambino eats a meal at an outdoor food stall. A man is attacked for wearing tight jeans. A crowd of men call him names and then begin hitting him. No one does anything to help him, and the way the attack is filmed suggests that these kinds of hate crimes are everyday occurrences. Later, another man, a thief, is set on fire. Bambino’s city is full of violent gangs and vigilantes.
And yet, Apalowo’s film is not violent. Scenes are short, mostly filmed with a static camera. Bambino and the photographer speak little when they are together, and apart from when they are on the motorbike, they ensure that there is distance between them. The camera, sometimes way back, emphasises that distance, demonstrating how dangerous intimacy can be in Nigeria.
But stored up in these gaps – those between the two men and those between them and the camera – is a longing that that is sometimes hard to watch. As Bambino, Tope Tedela is inscrutable, a man well-versed in how not to show emotion in case somehow a secret that he’s not even sure he has is revealed to his neighbours. Tedela’s Bambino is a master in policing his expressions and gestures.
There is more hope in the character of the photographer, played by Riyo David, as his occasional smiles suggest that a shared future is somehow possible. But at the same time, this lightness in his looks and manner is transgressive and could easily be used against him. No wonder the men are silent most of the time, even in the supposedly private space of Bambino’s small rooms.
In his shots of Lagos from the tourist spots to the shiny modern metallic restaurants in the centre, Apalowo makes clear that it is not the city that is at fault, but the people in it, and their views on homosexuality. Lagos could be a utopia if only morals changed. And despite its heartbreak and blistering betrayal, All the Colours of the World Are Between Black and White trusts in a future that may one day be imaginable.
All The Colours of the World Are Between Black and White is screening at the Raindance Film Festival 2023.
