Desert Flower

Desert Flower tells a rags-to-riches story, but it plays like two stories in conflict. Everything involving Waris in Africa or in London before her success feels true and heartfelt. Many later details are badly handled.

The film proves a gripping, if uneven, cinematic journey.

The broad comedy clashes with the movie's final message: that 6,000 girls face genital mutilation every day.

A lovely performance by Ethiopian supermodel-actress Liya Kebede as supermodel-activist Waris Dirie works wonders to elevate this uneven, occasionally awkward but often absorbing film.

Luckily, her cast makes up for the lapses, and Kebede is especially effective at showing how triumph over culturally sanctioned brutality remains a tentative prospect at best.

Suffers from a lack of focus and a sitcom script.

More earnest than agile, the whole thing smacks of heavy-handed authorial jiggering-never mind that it's based on a true story.

Desert Flower (2009) The Amazing Story of a Somalian Top-Model (12,426 – 05 May 2026 – Claudio Carvalho) “Desert Flower” (2009) is a film that tells the amazing story of the Somalian top-model Waris Dirie (Liya Kebede). Based on her autobiography, it shows Wary’s life since she was three in Somalia; how she was sold by her father to be the fourth wife of a man; how she fled to the Somalian Embassy in London. how she was helped by the saleswoman Marilyn (Sally Hawkins), hotel manager Pushpa Patel (Meera Syal) and janitor Neil (Craig Parkinson); how the famous photographer Terry Donaldson (Timothy Spall) found her working as cleaning lady of a fast-food and released her to the fashion world; and how BBC promoted her circumcision in Somalia. And her important speech in UN. The performances are top-notch and the screenplay is excellent, alternating the present with flashbacks of her childhood. My vote is eight. Title (Brazil): “Flor do Deserto” (“Desert Flower”) My Blog: ****/