Married to Work, the latest Pan-African title on Netflix, is a Kenyan and Tanzanian co-produced romantic comedy written by Angela Ruhinda (Binti) and Nadira Shakur and directed by Philippe Bresson (Single Kiasi). At 76 minutes, it’s a very brief affair, pun somewhat intended, that leaves your memory as quickly as it enters it. The story follows Kenyan real estate manager Malaika (Grace Wacuka, Single Kiasi), who after losing her job over inappropriate relations with an employee, relocates to Dar-es-Salaam for a three-month trial running a company bequeathed to an entitled ingrate son, Zaki (Big Brother Africa alum Idris Sultan), by its deceased founders. Married to Work pairs Malaika and Zaki as potential but pretty freaking obvious love interests. Pretty obvious because everything about this story and this execution is absolutely textbook.
We’ve all seen enough romantic comedies to be well-versed with the tropes and to see turns coming minutes prior. Of course, all we ask for is for this to be done expertly enough. This is a genre for which we are satisfied with the bare minimum as far as expectations go. You get a few good-looking people together and put them in a scenic set and have them whisper out Danielle Steele to each other; we’re not even asking for Jane Austen. Married to Work’s dialogue is wooden clunky, and compliments the story’s unformed quality, which is a strange advantage to have.
This film has proven something very important to me: perhaps our problem isn’t the sound of the dialogue and their insincere cadences but the very dialogue itself. When we’re first acquainted with the Tanzanian cast, their Swahili (helpfully subtitled), even for me, who understands the Kenyan iteration, still sounds clunky and unnatural. The Swahili itself is fine, immaculate even, it’s what they’re saying and how they say it that’s completely unconvincing. I’m starting to believe that the really talented writers on this continent don’t get the opportunity to showcase their original work, that should be a true reflection of our life or at least an honest, artful distortion of it. Or, much more likely, these writers simply don’t exist.
I’ve let go of the directors; this is way beyond them. See, Reuben Odanga, a talented writer and director, was in charge of the personality of his film when he made the wonderful Nafsi (also on Netflix). Nafsi has very Western dialogue but is staged in a way that works. There’s apparently a huge pool of incompetent writers as well as directors, but the root (the scribes!) should always be ground zero for change.
In Kenya, for instance, President Moi introduced the 8-4-4 education system, a very difficult curriculum that hardened our intellectual capacity a good deal, making us ripe for drilling and agreeable philosophy, mostly in sciences and what the later 20th-century third-worlds regarded as important. What we lacked, and we can see the repercussions in our entertainment and arts, is a decent frame of reference for the quality of art and media. As a collective, we never got to read Shakespeare at a young age, or great literature, or even more accessible cultural literary landmarks like Charles Dickens. There are very respectable and educated people out there who would watch this film and veritably enjoy it. Recommend it even. Only because they haven’t seen/read enough. Our great African authors like Margaret Ogola, Chinua Achebe, Ngugi wa Thiong’o and Chimamanda Ngozi, among others, were treated as an afterthought, obligatorily studied in high schools and never heard from again. We should’ve meditated upon those authors (especially our African ones) and traced an intelligible through line of philosophy and identity which we painfully don’t have. Why are we rehashing scripts and pulling literal lines of dialogue verbatim? Why are we here… again? Isn’t there more? We aren’t going to be impressed nor pretend that we are until they show us more. Film school is another thorn on our side that’s responsible for errors like these but that’s a story for another day.
Now, back to Married to Work. The story is run-of-the-mill. There’s subterfuge necessary for the closing of a deal that involves our two leads pretending to be married, and that, of course, leads them to develop real feelings for each other. The story, as it plays out, doesn’t feel in the least authentic or spontaneous; it’s like it’s hitting beats or markers. Checkpoints.
Dar-es-Salaam looks good, and Nairobi looks okay in the only two scenes it features in, but Zanzibar is the real beauty of the film – the scene-stealer. There was one sequence in which I suspended not only my disbelief but my disdain for this whole enterprise. It was honestly quite beautiful and virtuoso. Our two leads, Malaika and Zaki, have just finally gotten away with their deception, and the deal is nearly inked, so they celebrate by going to a small café, awash in purple neon light with a sweet Bongo Jazz band playing and singing soulfully. They’re given close-ups – the musicians as well as the leads – and the music merges with the narrative, and for a second, though sadly only for a fleeting second, I find myself believing in the story. We should get more of that. In fact, the best moments of this film are the ones where nobody is speaking at all, and it’s simply dreamy evocations with montages showing us Zanzibar, African cuisine and other sites.
Now, if only we could get that pesky dialogue sorted out, we’d be on to something. As things stand now, material like this is not only unattractive but unnecessary.
Married to Work is available to stream on Netflix.
