It Blooms in June is sure to keep you in the soft smiling limbo of the lotus eaters, and might yet leave you with the grudging suspicion that perhaps you have been cheated out of your time, as everything moves at a glacial pace.
By Victory Hayzard Solum
Every now and then, one gets reminded that there are different frames to the reality we currently occupy. There is the gritty edgy frame of the downtrodden and lowly. Way above that, there are the sharp tones of the upper echelon of society where all are vivid colours eddying with the momentum of gossip, grand larceny, and flash decision-making. Some frames are a jangling mixture of both. But somewhere amidst all of that is the cream-coloured frame where wholesomeness and good intentions hold sway. It is in a world of this last kind, that Korede Azeez sets her directorial debut feature, It Blooms in June.
Azeez gained renown back in 2022 when she emerged as the official Nigerian selection for the Netflix and UNESCO filmmaking initiative which birthed the 2023 Netflix series, African Folktales Reimagined. There she told a story about a young girl who rejects her parents’ choice of a suitor for her, opting, instead, for the love and virtual world of a cyborg. In It Blooms in June, she tells a somewhat similar story.
Mira Akande, played by Susan Pwajok (The Johnsons, Shuga), has been raised singlehandedly by her father, Lanre, played by Femi Jacobs (La Femme Anjola, Soólè), since the death of her mother in her childhood. However spoiled she may have been, she grows into a mild-mannered, sheltered teenager who can do no wrong. However, when a young boy, Ebisinde, played by Kem Ajieh Ikechukwu (Dark October, Shuga), and his mother, Joana, played by Kiki Omeili (Run, Little Black Book), move in next door, their cosy idyllic existence goes into upheaval with clashing interests and jumbled emotions.
With a ready chauffeur in her dad, Mira appears to not know her way around the town where she has lived all her life. So when she turns down Ebisinde’s request to be his tour guide, there is absolutely no sting to it. Rather, it is he, a young photographer seeking a model, who must take her to the choicest locations, while steering her in the path towards independence, as she gets ready for University. And, of course, her ever-suspicious father is not too happy about this.
All this is well and expected from a feature billed as a coming-of-age movie. Except, I remember my teenage years to be a far more turbulent time than is portrayed in It Blooms in June. Gone is all the urgency that compels us towards objects of desire that are at once fleeting and forever.
The characters tell us that they want things. And they certainly do huff and puff about their wants. But it is hardly believable that their inability to get them is ever more than a slight annoyance.
Puberty has apparently spared both teenagers in this movie its more incendiary passions. Mira meets a boy who fancies her, supposedly for the first time. And she maybe fancies him in return. But their conversations stay pat, with surface-level discussions of anime choices and “General Dad”. There is never any silent moment which enthrals us with the depth of things left unsaid. And thus when the great declaration of love is interrupted, there is no feeling of loss attending it. Why should it? You have probably heard those exact lines in a hundred other template movies.
It would seem like the problem highlighted here is on account of the questionable inexperience of the young actors. So, let’s turn to the adults.
Jacobs brings a lovably jolly and vulnerable touch to his character as Lanre. Here is a man who has sacrificed his more adult yearnings to raise his daughter, and who may have thus regressed somewhat to a child-like state. Omeili is graceful and amiable as Joana, with a smile ever at the ready. There is a lot of good neighbourliness here. So when the woman goes to the man in need of a handyman for her sink, try as may have been intended, the insinuations never fully take root. And when they announce their intention to begin dating, it cannot be seen as anything more than a routine and obligatory fling, as opposed to an actual entanglement.
There appears to have been the intention to keep this movie on the light and wholesome side. There is absolutely nothing threatening about Ikechukwu’s performance to justify Lanre’s perturbation. And when he finally gets Mira to disobey her father’s explicit instruction, the threat is more a matter of principle than fact, and the dangers are still several ways ahead.
It has been some time since Pwajok played Blessing on the TV series, The Johnsons. It Blooms in June sees her in the role of a sheltered teenager, but it might be sometime longer before we see her in a role which tests her acting capabilities.
Perhaps it is I who am too unused to such extended scenes of warmth and cultivated cheer. Still, there is something decidedly spiritless about characters with the unmitigatedly stereotypical film dialogue, and a camera that stands at an overly respectable distance from it all. Perhaps this is one of the hallmarks of films made for television. Or perhaps it is just plain tepid.
The film makes brilliant use of some original music by Joshua and Kiki Gukas, and there is a convincing live performance by the film’s in-universe celebrity, Larry Ville, played by Michael Dappa. But one wonders if Ladipoe and Simi’s “Know You” hasn’t been prematurely utilised, with lines of wanting to spend the weekend and kissing every other place of the body while the two virginal teenagers text.
Written by Gabriel Odigiri (Insecure Becky, Legacy), in a collaborative production by Natives Filmworks and Michaelangelo Productions, It Blooms in June is sure to keep you in the soft smiling limbo of the lotus eaters, and might yet leave you with the grudging suspicion that perhaps you have been cheated out of your time, as everything moves at a glacial pace. Don’t believe me? Watch the end credits.
Rating: 2.5/5
(It Blooms in June is currently streaming on Prime Video)
Victory Hayzard Solum is a freelance writer with an irrepressible passion for the cinematic arts. Here he explores the sights, sounds, and magic of the shadow-making medium and their enrichment of the human experience. A longstanding ghostwriter, he may have authored the last bestselling novel you read.