My name is Chioma, and I’m a hopeless romantic in love with messy love stories. This is why today, I’ll be going against all the voices in my head to review the 2023 Nollywood drama, A Sunday Affair.
I want to say A Sunday Affair is a love story, but really, it’s about the selfishness of human beings.
The movie starts with two best friends, Toyin and Uche, growing up together. Here, they are as 12-year-olds in 1999:
Then in 2009, with their mama-dash-me, hunchback wigs…
And now, in 2023…
Toyin (Dakore Egbuson) and Uche (Nse Ikpe-Etim) are at a wedding. Uche is clearly not here for the pastor’s lovey-dovey speech because she’s more focused on snatching some eye candy for fornication. Honestly, twinsies, because the only things of note at weddings are the liquor, food and eye candy.
Uche finally sets her sight on a hot gentleman — Sunday Akin Oyeyemi (Oris Ehruero) — but as fate would have it, he’s married with a child. Does that stop her? Absolutely not.
The main ceremony ends, and Toyin and Uche head to the bathroom to have the weirdest conversation about Uche’s wandering eye and how Toyin is supposed to be her voice of reason at this wedding.
The next scene consists of what I can only describe as weird “older people” foreplay. Because why is Uche spraying money at the happy couple while looking at Sunday like she’s trying to see into his future?
And why is Sunday dancing like a five-year-old at a birthday party?
After all the dancing, another lady tries to talk to the same Mr Hotness, but his wife (Eku Edewor) isn’t it.
After the little scene between husband and wife, Uche walks up to him, does some seductive telepathy with her eyes, and boom, Mr Hotness follows her for a quick round of adultery.
Oblivious of the quickie session, Toyin goes around searching for Uche and hoping to God her quick bathroom break hasn’t driven her best friend into the arms of another man.
Intense sex done and dusted, and it turns out Sunday and Uche are in-laws.
Just as Uche invites Sunday to an event at her art gallery, Toyin interrupts their conversation, ever ready to rescue Uche from her insatiable thirst for cheating men, and I think Uche can sense my doubt of her possible age. In a bid to keep up a young appearance, she calls Toyin her BFF, and I just want to know who they’re trying to fool, because it isn’t me.
At the art gallery event, Uche’s classless sugar daddy barges into her office, corners her and starts to yell. And now, I need a break because if you’re not my actual daddy, why are you yelling at me?
After a lot of back and forth, and the timely intervention of her assistant, Uche manages to return to the party for her speech (if we’re keeping it a buck, it looked and sounded like she was reading story time to a bunch of nursery school kids).
Clearly, there’s no party or public gathering big enough to hold whoever this Sammie fellow is. He interrupts her “Art is the 10th wonder of the world” speech to seek recognition for investing in her gallery. And this is why you should select your sugar daddies carefully. If Sam was a sugar daddy with shame, he wouldn’t be at that party looking for who to publicly disgrace.
Meanwhile, Toyin baby is on her way to Ibadan for some light research on how to make babies without the stress of a man when Mr. Hotness sits right beside her with his own wahala. He tries to flirt but goes all Sheldon Cooper on her with an “I’m glad you like trains” line. He actually gets her to like him in the cutest way ever.
Ready to return to Lagos after her trip to the fertility clinic, she goes back to the train station. But Nigeria happened, and there are bandits on the train tracks, so the trains aren’t moving. Sunday starts questioning the young man at the gate, which makes no sense because what do you want him to do? Fight the bandits?
Long story short, Toyin and Sunday have to spend the night in Ibadan. So they get dinner together, and she finds out he’s getting a divorce based on “cultural differences”. Once I heard this, I just knew the small pepper he’d shown me so far was only but the beginning. There’s no way those cultural differences weren’t his wife wanting him to keep away from other women and Sunday’s vehement refusal to end his philandering ways.
They leave the restaurant and get into the elevator. It’s nice, it looks cosy, and it’s giving confined space, so they have to touch at some point.
While walking Toyin to her room, Sunday gets a call from his wife, and praise be to whoever instilled shame into Toyin, because baby girl shuts him out and leaves him in the cold. Toyin returns to Lagos and gets into it with the most aproko babes Lagos has ever seen. Why did they enter a conversation nobody invited them to? After that craziness, we somehow end up at Uche’s family home at a family dinner Uche’s mother decided to attend wearing a gele.
The family dinner ends, and Femi sternly warns Sunday off Uche. That’s actually fair because why are you trying to ruin the boy’s new marriage by giving fuck me eyes to his wife’s sister over the dinner table?
Uche invites Sunday out for drinks, and this man they just warned to stay away from her, accepts the invitation?
Uche asks Sunday to invest in her gallery, even though it’s as useless as the Nigerian government and brings in zero profit. But does Sam refuse? No. Why?
They leave the restaurant and have sex in Sunday’s tiny ass, bright yellow sports car. No, I can’t believe we’ve already gotten here, approximately 15.4 million people in Lagos, and these babes want to die for a man named Sunday.
Toyin calls him right after and invites him to dinner. Of course, he accepts. And perhaps because we need to hear what Sunday really feels about what he’s doing with his life, he goes out with Femi, who tells him:
Like a good older brother, Sunday goes to end things with Uche and ends up participating in a TikTok challenge.
Sunday promises Femi he’ll break up with Toyin, and at this point, I really think Femi should take everything Sunday says with a pinch of salt because this fellow and his beard goes out with Toyin, and instead of breaking up with her, proceeds to enter her pant.
Halfway through this movie and the hottest babes in Lagos, Toyin and Uche, are yet to change the hair on their heads. I’m getting concerned.
Gingered to give the breakups another try, Sunday goes to Uche’s house (honestly, he should’ve just written her a note and slipped it under her door). He breaks up with her by bringing up Sam and insinuating she’d slept with him for his investment in the art gallery.
Sunday returns to Femi, and their discussions are beginning to feel like they’re planning a heist or something. Sunday decides he can no longer deal with the consequences of his actions and breaking up with Uche was too hard, so he’ll just ghost Toyin — like she doesn’t know his family members and where they all live.
When Toyin drops in on him at Femi’s house, Sunday breaks up with her properly. Because the EbonyLife multiverse wants to show this babe pepper, she gets home and finds out she has cancer.
Then she goes to the club because, what better way to sort through your feelings than a night out in Lagos. Meanwhile, Daddy Sunday is at home thinking about his life and the drama his penis has caused:
His thoughts are cut short by a call from Uche who’s lost Toyin at the club. He gets there, and for some reason, believes it’s the best time to confess his feelings to Uche.
He sends her home with Femi and then continues the search for Toyin on his own. He finally finds her at the beach. He thinks he’s the cause of her spiral, but Toyin quickly tells him to geddifok, because…
Sunday decides to forget the words he just told Uche and stay with Toyin instead. The babe already has cancer, is he really going to add a heartbreak to that?
We return to Uche and her big-for-nothing gallery, and everything from here happens pretty quickly. Toyin tells Uche she has cervical cancer, but that’s fine because she’s got Sunday by her side now. Their relationship continues, and Uche becomes their permanent third wheel.
Uche and Sunday continue circling each other until they finally find what they’re looking for.
Then Uche realises right after, “Wow, sleeping with my best friend’s man (who used to be my man) is a bad thing to do o”.
There’s 25 minutes left in this mess, and now, Toyin’s announced a pregnancy, swearing to bring the baby into this world by any means necessary.
I have an important question about this decision: who’s she leaving this baby with? Because she has cancer, and there’s a chance she won’t make it. I mean, how does one handle labour with stage 3 cervical cancer.
Clearly, I’m the only one willing to ask the right questions. Uche and Sunday just sit there, staring at her like she’s about to ruin their lives.
The pregnancy grows, and a heavily pregnant Toyin randomly suggests a trip to South Africa. Sunday just nods along.
Meanwhile, Uche’s gallery is closing down, but Vance Packard (the fakest name I’ve ever heard) is here to save the day with his $250,000 painting budget
(God, abeg. I don’t want to be a mechanic).
But Toyin goes into labour and refuses to birth her child until Uche arrives at the hospital. She finally gets to the hospital, and Toyin gives birth to a baby girl but dies during the labour.
Toyin, aka the real Vance Packard reveals in a note that she’s always known about Uche and Sunday, and she was the real selfish one here. But that’s fine because Uche, Sunday and Toyin’s daughter get to live happily ever after.
I think Toyin, Uche and Sunday needed to realise that shame is free, and they were too old for the nonsense behaviours they exhibited in this movie.
But if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to find out how much hypnotherapy costs so I can wipe this movie out of my brain.
QUIZ: Only People in Love Triangles Can Ace This “A Sunday Affair”
