Nafsi, the title of Reuben Odanga’s directorial feature debut, is a Swahili word that means ‘soul’. The film which was recently released on Netflix was first released in November 2021, and is currently the longest-running Kenyan film in cinemas at eight weeks. The story follows a couple trying to conceive a baby, you could say, a soul, and in the process lose their own. It starts off as a truly warm story about friendship before it evolves into a dark tale of double cross. How does Nafsi make that switch effectively without feeling like two movies? It avoids going predictably lurid in the second half and remains as understated and subtle as it is in the first, a major accomplishment for Odanga and everything behind this film.
Nafsi begins in a hospital room during an abdominal ultrasound where Aisha (Mumbi Maina) and Sebastian aka Seba (Alfred Munyua) are visibly anxious scanning their doctor’s expression, as he in turn scans Aisha’s belly. Odanga holds the shot for a long moment so we can inspect the body language of all three, a technique he deploys to great effect as the movie progresses. Aisha is then told that what she has is a life-threatening pregnancy, and that the doctor will have to terminate it as soon as possible. We then learn that this isn’t the first time this is happening to this attractive couple, this couple that drives a sleek black Mercedes Benz and lives in a swank uptown mansion. All they’re missing is a cute little kid to match! So we sympathise from the beginning.
On the domestic front we are then made to pick sides; with anyone who’s ever heard of the word empathy siding with Aisha for the way Seba becomes distant, uncommunicative, and passive aggressive and then… and then, suddenly whiny, clingy and controlling. At some points you ask yourself how Aisha could wind up with such a man, until you find out exactly how.
To calm her best friend and get her in a better head space, Shiko (Catherine Kamau) takes Aisha to Diani beach to let off some steam; a sequence in which we glimpse the true bond of friendship between these two. The only thing that keeps killing the holiday vibe is Aisha’s constant sadness and crying. She’s still broken up about all those miscarriages, four or so we are told, and Shiko discovers the only way to appease her friends suffering is to become Aisha’s surrogate, and this is where the turn in the film takes place.
The darkness that follows is painted with an impressionist brush. When Shiko can’t sleep with her lover because of the pregnancy, he gets angry and subsequently beats and has his way with her. This we never see, but it is visually implied tastefully in some of the film’s highest artistic moments.
While Shiko is carrying their baby (who shows early signs of down syndrome), Aisha and Seba conceive their own, and thus begins the shadiness. The couple become monsters in the pursuit of a child, with hints of guilt-ridden African responsibility. It wouldn’t be far off to say the entire movie is a set-up for the final emotionally gruesome scenes where the couple seem almost… soulless. Aisha destroys her relationship with Shiko to suit her ideals and to please her husband, while Seba destroys his relationship with everyone, save for one lucky guy. In the end all that remains is a bloodied mess of giving and betrayal. Some of the scenes have a horror movie ambience to them, like the one in which Aisha and Seba threaten Aisha. Real frightening stuff. Almost every scene has something under the surface lingering to think about. I’m certainly gonna be thinking about this one for a while, whether I like it or not.
Visually, Nafsi is pristine; save, for one or two nit-picky issues I took with it. I can’t say for sure, but I don’t know if the film was shot originally on an anamorphic lens or whether those letterboxes were added in post. I wondered about this because certain shots sell this shortcoming out as the framing sometimes cuts off the top of someone’s head, or otherwise vital (I would think) portions of the frame. On IMDB its listed aspect ratio is 16:9, which generally means the frame covers the whole screen. On its translation to Netflix, it somehow gets turned into the more popular 2.55:1 ratio. It also appears to have lost 14 mins of runtime during that movement. I would hope that could explain some of the loose threads in the plot, for example why doesn’t Seba actually work? How does that work? A very interesting puzzle left unexplored.
Nafsi is available to stream on Netflix.
