Desert Flower movie interpretation

The film is based on the real events of international supermodel Wallis Tilly, telling the story of how she was known for her counterattack from an ugly duckling to a white swan in the first half of her life, and how she fought against African circumcision. The name Of the Desert Flower means bravery, strength, beauty, and is also a trait of Wallis herself.

Many people think that Wallis changed her life because she became a supermodel, but Wallis said that what changed her life was not becoming a supermodel, but the nightmare brought to her by the distant hometown.

Wallis was born in the Somali desert, a very backward country where women were very humble and needed to be attached to men to survive. Wallis grew up living a nomadic life with her parents and siblings. In that vast desert there was a very cruel manner, and their followers "only a woman who has been cut off is a good woman." "As a result, countless little girls lose their lives every day or every year because of this terrible ritual. Wallis also did not escape that tragic fate. When she was three years old, she was brought by her mother to a circumcisionist for circumcision. In this way, her clitoris and labia were cut off by the underilum blade, and the blood stained the stone red. She developed a high fever as a result, but thankfully she survived.

When Wallis was twelve, her father sold Wallis to an old man in his sixties who could be her grandfather for five camels, and she had no choice or anyone to ask for her opinion. Paying a gift to marry a child is different from buying and selling. However, Wallis did not obey her father's arrangement, she chose to run away from marriage, and with her mother's acquiescence, she went to Mogadishu alone to find her grandmother. She had a hard journey, crossing the endless desert and the Gobi Desert, her feet blurred by the stones on the Gobi. She was hungry and nibbled on the bark of the tree and ate the leaves, and finally she met a car, she thought she had met a kind person, she did not think that she was almost bullied by the so-called good people, did she feel a little angry when she saw this, is this what people do? Not even a child is spared, just thinking about those who are stubborn.

Wallis worked hard to find her grandmother, who kept her despite her family's objections, and her grandmother said to Wallace, "It's a miracle that you can survive." She later went to London with her aunt and worked as a maid at the Somali Embassy.

After a few years as a maid at the Somali Embassy, because of a coup d'état in Somalia, everyone wanted to return to Somalia, and she refused to return to the place that made her despair, so she left London alone. Because she didn't speak English, she had to live on the streets and had to pick up the garbage in the bin every day to keep her alive. Probably guided by Allah, she met one turning point after another in her life, and her life in London gradually became better, and it got better and better.

Her first turning point in life was Miss Marilyn, the shopping guide at the mall, which is the scene at the beginning of the film, they met in the toilet, that day was terrible for Miss Marilyn, probably because she did not accept an invitation to dance school or was scolded by the boss, in short, it was terrible for her. But it was a very lucky day for Wallis. Because of the kindness of Marilyn took her in, it was great for her to have a safe haven for her to sleep in the wind, and Marilyn also introduced her to a job in a restaurant, which allowed her to meet a second turning point in her life and embark on her peak moment.

Her second turning point in life was when she met a famous photographer, Terry Donaldson, at the restaurant, although she did not agree to Donaldson's invitation at first, because it was not a good thing for her to take pictures of her for a different etiquette, as you can see in the film, the clothes worn by Somali women. But then, perhaps it was her bold change, she later approached the photographer Donaldson, who introduced him to the female owner of the modeling agency, through his introduction, coupled with her beautiful silhouette, so she soon became the new fashion darling. When she was photographed, her eyes radiated a strong, confident, determined, and story-telling glow. In the spotlight, her uniqueness attracted the attention of the whole world and became a glittering supermodel on stage.

But she inevitably had many small episodes on the way to success. Once, Marilyn and Wallis went to dance, and Wallis fled. Back at the apartment, she saw Marilyn sleeping with a man she had just met, which subverted her worldview, saying, "Decent women don't do that." Wallis accused her of being too frivolous. Marilyn replied, "We can be happy with ourselves and respected by others at the same time." Wallis disagreed with her, because Wallis had originally believed that only a woman who had been cut was a good woman. She asked Marilyn, "Don't you have to be circumcised as a woman?" Marilyn said she had never heard of it, and after hearing Wallace's words, Marilyn's face showed shock and pain.

Later, Wallis suddenly suffered pain, Marilyn took her to see a doctor, the doctor wanted to do surgery for her to remove the stitches, because the doctor did not understand Somali, so he asked a Somali male nurse to help translate, but the male nurse did not truthfully translate the doctor's content, but accused her of betraying tradition, betraying her family, betraying the nation, do not feel ashamed? Wallis's face on the examination table was humiliated and stoic, and the fake translator was a scumbag who thought he was a defender, but the pain was not inflicted on him.

Because of the stinging again and again, Wallis made a decision to change her life, she decided to make herself a seemingly normal woman, she began to accept a new way of life, and even after she became famous, the world was interested in how she changed from an ugly duckling to a white swan to become an international supermodel that attracted the attention of the audience, but in an interview, Wallis said: "I don't want to talk about my Story of the Shepherd's Becoming a Top Model, I want to say that the day I changed my destiny was the day I was circumcised at the age of three. ”

Wallis, she boldly told her story, told her experience to the whole world, and what she hoped the world would hear, abolished the death circumcision.

"Walking on the road of life, you will be hit by wind and rain, you will enjoy the sunshine, and you will also be caught in the eye of countless hurricanes." The survival of the individual depends entirely on the strength of the will. This is a sentence written by Wallis Diri in the opening of her autobiography. But another verification of the sentence "My life is up to me, not by heaven".