Desert Flower (Fleur du Désert) 2009- Film Review

 

Ritvij’s review published on Letterboxd:

Watched. My rating: 8/10. 

  Its a rags to riches story but an unconventional one; in any traditional one, once the protagonist reaches a western country, they start with a clean slate, working slowly to their way to the top. Isn't that the famous, or infamous, depending on whom you may ask, "American Dream!"? But in Desert Flower, the protagonist carries her problems from the old country and lives her each day with it. I guess genital mutilation is not a problem you can just shrug off, now can you?

Yes sir, yes madam, thirty minutes in and it gets to the point, shocking the audience if they hadn't already knew what the story was about (I knew it 'cause the movie was recommended to me by a human being). Getting back to the subject, stuff like this continues to baffle me. Keep in mind that when I talk about mutilation, I'm talking for both the genders. Its clearly designed to repress sexual pleasure, it is fantastically painful, leads to trauma, leads to the dulling of the sexual relationship and can be in that moment life threatening in itself. There are hundreds and hundreds of records of babies who've died or have had life threatening infections as a result of this disgusting practice.

Its an utterly idiotic and ghastly wicked social construct accepted by people in the past who couldn't tell the difference between piss and rain. But its not like they hate their kids. They might even say that the reason they do this is that they love them. But that doesn't excuse the horrid ritual being inflicted upon them. In the past, rituals like these are how boys were trained to become soldiers and girls were groomed to like repression. 

Childhood indoctrination is a fascinating thing. Teach a child that the burqa is a good thing and (negative) reinforce it with religion, in a few years you'll get a woman who loves the wretched garment.
There are a couple of scenes involving child actresses which needed not to be filmed in the way they were filmed. Its not the best shot film, its not the best scripted film, and its not the best edited and sounding film, but it has its place and deserves recognition. 

An uncut and hidden gem.