One desperately wants to like the docu-drama “Desert Flower,” especially as a woman concerned about the welfare of other women. Female genital mutilation is one of the greatest acts of misogyny that is still currently practiced in the world. Waris Dirie survived although two of her sisters did not and has been active in raising awareness. “Desert Flower” is her story based on her 1998 autobiography as told by director/writer Sherry Horman.

Waris eventually rose to become an international model, but the movie begins with her as a tween and wisely leaves the female circumcision until near the end. Setting us down in rural Somalia we first meet Waris (Soraya Omar-Scego) as a young girl tending her family’s herd of goats and concerned with her younger brother. Her life is impoverished, but not unhappy until she learns she has been betrothed to a man older than her own father who already had three wives. She can’t turn the man down because he’s already paid well for her.

Her horror at this arrangement causes her to do something desperate: flee across the desert alone in search of her grandmother. The people she meets aren’t all friendly. She is almost raped by a man who gives her a ride after she has survived the worst parts of desert travel.

Waris does find her grandmother, but she is also poor and quickly sends Waris to London as a servant for another relative. Waris spends her first years in London unloved, unpaid and uneducated, virtually locked in a well furnished prison like an African Cinderella. When a political coup forces her relatives to return to Somalia, Waris (now played by model Liya Kebede) stays in London, living on the streets, picking through trash for food. In time, she finds a friend (Sally Hawkins) and a job cleaning at a fast food restaurant.

There she meets her fairy godfather, a famous photographer, Terry Donaldson (Timothy Spall), who is looking for new faces although we soon enough learn that he was not just looking at her face, but also undressing her with his eyes. How this once modest girl turns into a woman who poses nude isn’t examined and that is probably the greatest problem with this movie. The scenes move the action forward, but do not give any emotional or psychological depth. Certainly the topic and the concept of a three-year-old being circumcised (as well as her sister bleeding to death and another sister dying from complication during a pregnancy) are heartrending , but the movie itself is awkward, choppy and lacking in a clear emotional flow.

Dirie founded the Desert Flower Foundation in 2002 as part of her activism and has served as a UN ambassador (UN Special Ambassador for the Elimination of Female Genital Mutilation) from 1997-2003. She has written several books.

• Desert Flower (1998)
• Desert Dawn (2004)
• Desert Children (2005)
• Letter to my mother (2007)
• Schwarze Frau, weißes Land (2010)

As of March 2005, she is an Austrian citizen. Her foundation is based in Vienna.