On the face of it, there’s a formidable aggregation of talent and media firepower on display in this lively but faintly baffling short film set in Lagos, with an original story credit for its producer, the Nigerian super-producer Mo Abudu; it is written and directed by Idris Elba and stars Seal. Within its 19-minute running time it appears to try summarising the action of an entire 90-minute feature film. There isn’t a moment to really relax and explore any relationship in any satisfying and plausible way; the line-readings are rushed and uncomfortable and, most bewilderingly, Seal doesn’t actually get to sing all that much, although as an actor he has a strong and confident address to the camera.
The premise is that Millicent (played by Nse Ikpe-Etim) runs a vibrant and hugely successful club in Lagos, but she is very ill, and the question of who is to inherit this lucrative, fashionable place causes a tense confrontation with Millicent’s daughters Comfort (Eku Edewor) and Patience (Atlanta Bridget Johnson) who have come from London with the candid intention of selling up for cash; they resent having to defer to their Lagos-based sister Bisi (Constance Olatunde), who is much more committed to the club. And what causes, or should theoretically cause, the emotional temperature to rise is the reappearance of Johnson (played by Seal), a good-natured musician who has been away in the army and whose paternity of one or all the young women is naturally a central issue.
Inevitably, it is Johnson’s performance, in concert with Bisi, which is to cause instant reconciliation for one and all, but that is a glib, cliched idea that doesn’t work dramatically or musically. Dust to Dreams could have come to life if it had tried to do more with less, perhaps amplify one or two of the many micro-episodes crunched together here.
As it is, this feels like a luxury-vanity project and an oddity in the CVs of all the talents involved.
Dust to Dreams is screening at the Toronto film festival
