Love Lockdown is an attractive material that wants to say a few things about the divisibility of love and its inadequacy in the face of certain circumstances.
By Vivian Nneka Nwajiaku
If you judge Love Lockdown (2025) by its deliberately risqué trailer and all the posh speak, and you go into it expecting more promiscuity and explicit content than an actual story, you may be in for a pleasant surprise.
Directed by Lyndsey F. Efejuku, who has previously tackled heavy themes within the romance form in films such as The One for Sarah (2022), Love Lockdown is marketed as an erotic-romance drama, which it is, but make no mistake: that’s not all it is. It does open with a steamy scene, and spreads some more here and there, but erotica is not exactly the film’s priority.
Love Lockdown is an attractive material that wants to say a few things about the divisibility of love and its inadequacy in the face of certain circumstances. That the film is set in one of the most trying times in recent history, during the coronavirus pandemic-induced lockdown, grounds it more tightly in reality.
It’s a pity that the screenplay doesn’t do enough to exploit its characters’ inner dilemmas or situational anxieties, preventing it from really saying those things it has in mind.
Based on an audioplay written by Anthony Deluola, who is also credited as one of three co-writers of the screenplay, Love Lockdown is a COVID-19 inspired love triangle adult romance drama that finds an attractive young man forced to stay holed up with an irresistible ex-lover whom he never stopped loving while engaged to be married to another beautiful woman whom he also loves.
Theirs is a triangle of dark-skinned gorgeousness, with Andrew Yaw Bunting (Water and Garri (2024)) starring as Yemi, the male lead, torn between Taylor, played by a dedicated Yewande Osamein (Finding Hubby (2020)), and Zainab, played by an ever-pleasant Detola Jones (To Freedom (2023)).
The drama is quite straight-forward; Yemi and Taylor went to university together, and that’s where they fell in love. His family loves her and she loves them, but life took them to different cities in different worlds, making a permanent relationship between them seemingly impossible.
Taylor lives in London but has been planning her career around a future with Yemi and is on the verge of moving back to Lagos. On his part, Yemi lives in Lagos where he has fallen in love with Zainab, and they’re planning a wedding she’s taking far more seriously than he expected.
In all of this, there’s the impression that Yemi is drawn to one because of how similar she is to the other. In fact, they are initially so alike that Zainab’s wedding plans are practically identical to Taylor’s dream wedding.
As fate, or the screenwriters of Love Lockdown, will have it, Zainab takes off on a one-week bachelorette galcation on the same day that Taylor, in town for a pivotal meeting, drops by for a nice dinner with her old lover where he plans to break his news to her in person before he walks down the aisle.
By the end of the day, the entire country would have shut down after multiple COVID-19 cases were confirmed. Zainab’s one-week party would have become a two-week fun-filled quarantine period, and every flight that could take Taylor back to London would have been cancelled.
Unable to find a hotel, and with no friend or family in Lagos other than Yemi, Taylor quickly finds herself out of options. Well, until Yemi volunteers his home. Taylor laughs, and honestly, so do I. As plausible as it is, it’s a crazy proposal for people in their emotional situation. But there are no other options. So, she practically moves in with him for the period, and we get to watch them play house, consciously or unconsciously.
Things get awkward, then cordial. Their banter skips between friendly and flirty. Then, they get defensive, with Yemi wanting to protect his relationship with the woman he’s chosen to spend his life with, and Taylor wanting to protect the future with him that she’s been planning her life around. And then, they get steamy.
Watching the will-they-won’t-they unfold is a guilty pleasure, in part because there’s an unsuspecting fiancée having the time of her life at her bachelorette party, but also because the trailer already spoiled the surprise. We might not know what will tip the scales, but we know they will be tipped.
What is important, however, is how Love Lockdown wants you, as the audience, outsiders looking in, to feel. Your own moral dilemma, not necessarily the characters’. We’re used to love triangles where at least one side is deficient, morally or emotionally, and it’s easy to pick a side and scorn the other.
But where do you stand when all sides have good intentions and credible chemistry, even if not necessarily of the swoon-worthy variety? What is your take on the divisibility of love as portrayed in Love Lockdown, a person’s capacity to genuinely−not maliciously−love two people at the same time?
Sure, the genuineness of Yemi’s love for both women is questionable. When an engaged man has dinner with a former lover, invites her to stay in his home, and keeps both events from his fiancée, it raises a negative assumption, especially in this era where, as Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie famously described, the assumption of good faith is dead.
Plus, Yemi’s motivations are suspect, or confusing at best. One minute, he is completely head-over-heels in love with his fiancée; the next, he is willing to throw it all away in a heartbeat. One minute, he knows her well enough to make drastic decisions without needing to involve her because he is sure she will not mind; the next, when it benefits his basest desires, he does not know her well enough to know what she cannot do.
For a calm and calculated person, features well established in the first act, before the lockdown, his impulsiveness comes off as suspicious and undeserved. He’s an inconsistent character masked as an indecisive one, and a clearer dive into his internal conflicts−and those of Love Lockdown’s female lead−could very much have made the difference.
Thankfully, Bunting leads Love Lockdown with the charm of a romantic lead and the interest of an actor who knows that the character he’s been assigned is intended to be more than just a pretty face. His emotive interpretation imbues Yemi with an honesty that counters the suspicion the screenplay unintentionally creates.
When Yemi, sitting across from Taylor at a restaurant table, tells her he is getting married to someone else even though he still loves her and will always do, Bunting wears the demeanour of a man who is certain of the rightness of his decision but is equally torn by it, at least on behalf of the woman whose heart he is breaking.
It helps that Efejuku has a strong grip on the film’s ideals and a lot of interest in highlighting Love Lockdown’s subtleties. The film’s poorly composed sound is a major weakness in her technical control, with music that is often distracting, score that is often forceful, and diegetic sound that is occasionally cloudy, echoing a couple of times. But her vision is aided by cinematography that takes a closer look, favouring medium close ups and ensuring that the film remains a close-knit, intimate affair, so much so that third parties to the film’s story are often kept at a distance, if not totally out of view.
It is the camerawork and lighting, changing with the times and emphasising isolation and proximity within space (and, of course, tuning up the raunchiness), that keep Love Lockdown situated in its COVID-19 era lockdown setting. As for the screenplay, the pandemic is merely an excuse to keep the old lovers trapped together and the present lovers separated.
The film’s entire premise is heavily dependent on the COVID-19 lockdown, but the universal anxiety and near-panic that came with the lockdown era are all but absent. Love Lockdown’s screenplay misses the opportunity to milk the intensity of its primary plot device, and one can only wonder how the pressures of the lockdown could have heightened the stakes in this film.
Rating: 3/5
(Love Lockdown is currently showing in Nigerian cinemas.)
Vivian Nneka Nwajiaku is a writer, film critic and lawyer writing from Lagos. She’s just returned from a long hiatus and can’t wait to unpack as many films as humanly possible. Connect with her on Twitter @Nneka_Viv