Christmas holidays have always brought about cheer excitement globally. It’s a time dedicated to family and loved ones, a time to reconnect and rekindle memories and create new moments. In Kenya, the Christmas season comes with traditions such as upcountry get-togethers, church thanksgiving service, picnics at Uhuru Park, nyama choma and cold drinks, and gifts. However, what happens when as a parent, you’re not feeling the Christmas spirit because you have your priorities set on work?
Peter Kawa’s short film Christmas Love plays out this entire scenario through its thirty-minute run, revolving around the relationship between a nine-year old daughter and a widowed workaholic father. This is Kawa’s second project as director. His first, Lost in Time (2019), won him a Best Director Kalasha award. He is also known for his acting in projects like County 49, Uradi, and Escape from Mogadishu.
Written by Edijoe Mwaniki (Lost in Time), Christmas Love clearly establishes the wants and needs of the father Sam Wati (Abel Mutua) from the onset. His want is to create a financially stable home for his daughter while his need is to be an ever present father. In the opening scene, Sam is busy at his desk, finishing a work report so he make it on time to pick up his daughter Neema (Neema Kawa) from a Christmas play rehearsals. His odds are stacked against him, when his boss Bob (Robert Burale) adds on a new task, with a tighter deadline. “This is a small cost to pay for being employee of the month” his boss says. Then to the failed pleas of Sam, begging to have more time with his daughter, Bob offers him the keys to his car, to enable him to come to work early after assuring him that a huge bonus will follow. Sam gives in and darts out late into the night to go pick up Neema up, hours after her rehearsals are over.
As Christmas Love progresses, one cannot help but wonder whether by the end of it all, Sam will finally let his daughter come first instead of work. He’s a character on a hamster wheel, trapped in a repetitive work cycle. And as much as he is making headway with his boss, back home, his relationship with his daughter is stuck. Now, the dynamics presented in the film are well set out to create a high-paced emotional driven story. Unfortunately, Christmas Love fails to attain this on so many levels.
The first half of the film is extremely slow, with certain bits feeling unnecessary. This poor decision in the editing room makes the entire pace suffer, right off from the start. Intent in filmmaking is a golden rule; everything that an audience sees has to exist for a reason. Every dialogue, prop, scene even character, if their intention to be on the screen is not of use then it means it should never have been there to begin with. Christmas Love blatantly ignores this rule. For instance, we have an entire scene with Sam dropping off Neema’s teacher home, another moment in which the camera lingers a bit too long in Neema’s room before her dad switches off the light, a scene where Sam is trying to prepare dinner and finally the watch guard at the gate. (I get it was to add comic relief, but the pace was instantly diluted in that moment). All this culminates to feeling that perhaps the film was desperately trying to reach the 30-minute mark by any means necessary.
Rooting for Sam is easy, who would not want to support a widowed fathers quest to make it on time to their daughter’s Christmas play? All the raw materials for a powerful emotional arc story are there. So why does Christmas Love feel somewhat underwhelming. One could be in the dialogue – the entire story comes off with a very preachy theme. Christ is love. Granted the film’s title already pre-sets the audience to anticipate the theme. However, an over-expository dialogue by Sam’s wife Judy (Grace Ekirapa) though a dream sequence, and then at the end of the film, this is the message ‘cleverly’ spelled out (literally) for us to grasp. It’s a a bit melodramatic. Additionally, the entire character journey feels shoved down our throat to allow for any real emotions we could have for Sam, and most importantly for Sam and Neema as a duo.
As a universal story, Christmas Love doesn’t have a touch of local authenticity to it. This is easily debatable, however for a story, that aims to reach a larger and diverse audience, the film would have been more adaptable and added a Kenyan feel to it by even as simply as changing its predominantly English dialogue to Swanglish. The moments in the film where you feel a hint of relatability is when Sam was rushing through the traffic jam and was yelling in sheng to the other motorists or even when he is negotiating with the gatekeeper to allow him inside. A change in dialect would have probably done magic to make the film feel homegrown. No characters would have greatly benefited from this more than Sam and Neema, whose bond felt distant.
Being daring by tapping into unchartered territories is what makes a filmmaker stand out. And Christmas Love deserves applause for setting out to make a Christmas film that is greatly relies on not one but an entire ensemble of novice child actors. Directing child actors, one can only imagine it is not an easy feat, but being able to professionally mentor them into the film space, is what any directors in the industry should attempt at some point in their careers. This is the only way we can build an entire generation of new film actors, lest they only end up learning the ‘drama festivals’ way of acting.
Also worth praise is Abel Mutua, who as Sam, breaks out of his conventional famous ‘Mkurugenzi’ persona or past comedic roles and gives us a performance with so much depth that elevates him as a serious actor. Surprisingly, this is what sustains the entire film, getting to see Mutua in a different set up, and view how he reacts to the various situations thrown at him. You can only wish he was given more material to play with to see what new levels he would have unlocked.
Ultimately, Christmas Love is a film that follows a simple story line, one that any working parent could easily relate. If perhaps, the film paid more attention to building the story arc, the message would have landed more organically. However, Christmas Love will still go in the books as Kenya’s first Christmas film (a short nonetheless), one that we can be proud for being a trendsetter.
Christmas Love is streaming on Netflix.
