Far from Perfect, Far from Terrible

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

The movie is autobiographical and makes the grade as a well made movie. It is easy to understand and follow. There is a story that is compelling and rewarding. I liked many aspects of the music and cinematography.However, the movie is important because it has a shocking affect on the viewer with regard to the widespread use today of a barbaric practice of female genital mutilation or FGM. It is a practice steeped in obligation most often based in religion but also cultural. Watching the movie demands the viewer make efforts to speak out and stop the practice. That can mean just shouting out to our politicians and demand greater controls in these areas most often targeted for foreign aid money. How do we get religious leaders to scream at the people and reject such barbaric Hadiths and interpretations. Watch the movie and be moved.

When a friend of mine suggested watching "Desert Flower", immediately my thought was of a Romantic Comedy of sorts. It was not thought of as a Drama or a Comedy, nor was it ever thought of as anything like the film that we sat down to view.The story revolves around that of Warris (Liya Kebede) who, from the sandy deserts of Somalia, arrives in England. Mixed with the short mini flashbacks of Warris's life before coming to the UK, they show the eventual story and reasons surrounding her presence. With little left to the imagination for the viewer, Desert Flower leaves nothing short of a very educational story of a Somali woman coping with the taboo subject of female circumcising.As this truly is an autobiographical journey of Warris Dirie, many people will find that much of the film is filled with emphasis on abuse – and that is the term that I would use in all manner of the word and expression – as the depiction of the young woman's life is put through sheer hell. With the help of her friends, however, Marylin and Terry, the journey becomes possibly less raw and more tolerable for living as normal as anyone who has witnessed all that Warris has.Desert Rose is absolutely riveting viewing for those who find their True Stories more appealing than Fiction and Fantasy, of which there is none of that within the scenes of this movie. We believe that maybe "Desert Flower" has broken ground in every possible place concerning the subject matter that it exposes the viewer to, not to mention award winning for the strength, fight and progress in the approach to the United Nations concerning the inhuman suffering that other country women like Warris have and are still going through.Timothy Spall playing his top modelling photography character acts out his parts with excellence, as does the sometimes hard faced Lucinda who is played by Juliet Stevenson. Combining the world of fashion and real life together, the overall and sometimes harrowing parts of a tortured life brings the viewer ever closer to the point where they will shout, cringe or even remark loudly on such treatment that Warris goes through from a young age. If the viewer can get past the point of her Somalia Culture Tradition of young girls, then what they will find is a welcome sigh of relief as to the outcome.DVD Archive Rating: 10/10 (Top marks for a truly great directed factual based film)

I found this movie to be a handful of stereotypes and clichés about women and womanliness. In effect, aside from a few powerful scenes, the rest of the movie seemed like a never-ending ad for some big fashion firm or an incomprehensible promotion for some anorexic and beautiful actor. If the movie had stopped right at the edge of our Western-world obscenities about fashion, beauty canons and femininity, I could have considered it just an OK movie. But the plot, although real, is unrealistic, and the frames and shots, not to mention the story, are absolutely superficial. The movie probably wants to convey us its rightful disgust for excision practices, yet it prompted my disgust by treating its own main character as mere merchandise, in accordance with some of our Western-world values. I didn't watch the end of the movie because I found insulting the 2/3rds of it. I hope the end makes up for the long and superficial beginning, although I very much doubt it.

An emotional trip of a woman from the desert of Somalia to the United Nations. I will not follow that road which is detailed and marked by exploitation, scarification, mutilation, alienation, rejection, and all other words in that line rhyming with immigration. The film is dealing with one day in the life of an Africa woman that changed that very life into an ordeal. It is called excision and it is performed at the age of three. Beside the direct death rate, and even the indirect death rate (later when pregnant and wanting to deliver the baby) those who survived are made psychologically inferior and dependent. They are not able to control their lives and to develop the energies that would transform the whole African continent. A tradition coming from Black Africa that was later integrated by Islam when it arrived, though Islam was careful not to spread the practice in the population that did not have that tradition, particularly the Arabs. It is nothing but the survival of an enslaving sexual practice that has to disappear from this earth as fast as possible. Yet we are far from it. Excision, and I will say like all other sexual mutilation, is a crime against humanity, including in the US where 95 per cent of males are circumcised. They have even invented a word for natural: uncircumcised and uncut, which is the barbaric bigotry of some turned into lexical tyranny.Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne, University Paris 8 Saint Denis, University Paris 12 Créteil, CEGID