The film is based on the best-selling autobiography of the Somali black model, Wallis Deary. It mainly tells the story of Wallis from the Somali desert to become the world’s top model.The director constantly uses the inverted montage technique to turn the plot from the present to the past, and then from the past to the present. In flashbacks or interludes, Wallis’ childhood and reality are constantly converging vertically in time
The film begins in a desert. Wallis, a little girl, is watching the birth of a lamb with joy. She named the lamb Fatuma, and her brother told her that it was the name of God. Hua Li didn’t care who said it was not allowed. In Somalia, which is deeply influenced by Judaism, Wallis’s disrespect for God has begun. This sentence has written the prelude to her doomed extraordinary life.
After her menarche, her father realized that the girl could marry, so he married her to Muhammad, who was over 60, at the price of five camels, and became her fourth wife. The obedient mother personally took Wallis to Muhammad’s side. Although she did not give up, she had to send her daughter to the man’s side for the high gift money.
In order to get rid of her fate, Wallis ran away at night. Her mother was unable to save her, so she had to do nothing to stop her. This also led to her being beaten by her husband after her daughter ran away.
In the vast desert, the young Wallis is running alone, going all out towards freedom, even though her feet are already bloody. On the road, she met a seemingly kind driver who thought she could take a ride, but she underestimated the evil of people’s hearts. The man on the car wanted to violence her. In a hurry, Wallis picked up the stone on the car and directly knocked the man unconscious. After many hardships, she finally came to her grandmother’s house in Mogadishu.
The runaway Wallis has become a disgrace to the family, but her grandmother’s family is not rich, and everyone is unwilling to take her in. Grandma said, “It is a miracle that she can walk through the desert alone!” “I always believe that it is Allah’s will that you have to endure so many hardships, and it must have his deep meaning.”
Grandma sent Wallis, 12, to her uncle’s family at the Somali Embassy in the UK as a maid. During the six years of working at her aunt’s home in London, the only English that Wallis can speak is that she secretly lies in front of the living room door and hears the TV saying, “Today is your lucky day.”
Somalia’s civil war broke out, and the uncle who lived in the embassy in London was also removed and repatriated. They had to return to Somalia. Wallis picked up her certificate and escaped from the embassy. Because of the language barrier, Wallis couldn’t find a job for a long time. She had to sleep in the street and pick up food in the garbage can to make a living.
In order to survive, she had to go to the mall to steal things. I met Marilyn, a salesperson. The two met in a clothing store and met in the toilet. Later, there was a dispute. Wallis seems to have identified Marilyn and followed her all the way. At that time, Wallis didn’t speak English very well, and was penniless, so she could only sleep in the street.
Marilyn couldn’t bear to see her wandering in the street. Finally, he persuaded the landlord, allowed Wallis to live with him, and introduced her to a job in a restaurant.
While cleaning in the restaurant, Wallis steals and hides the leftover food from the guests. The small action is seen by Donaldson who is eating. The African-American girl has a very perfect facial contour. Donaldson handed her business card, while Wallis didn’t take it to heart, just put it in her pocket.
Under the influence of Marilyn, Wallis gradually began to integrate into London life. Marilyn took her to the bar, and Wallis met a boy who made her excited. Jackson’s intimacy frightened her. Wallis ran away and ran into the room of two people. She ran into Marilyn who was fighting with the man in the bar on the bed.
Influenced by the idea that women can only have relationships after marriage since childhood, Wallis believes that only dishonest women can do such things, and only circumcised women are good women. In order to ensure the purity of women, circumcision can only be done by her husband on the wedding day. She even thought that all women should be circumcised.
Seeing Marilyn’s confused eyes, she showed her private parts to Sally. Marilyn could not restrain her heartache for Wallis and her abhorrence of the bad habit of circumcision. She also showed herself to Wallis and told Wallis that not all women should be treated like this.
Wallis was sent to the hospital by Marilyn because of her menstrual abdominal pain. The doctor found her private part after being cut and stitched during the examination. The kind doctor wanted to operate on her, but no one could speak Somali, and Wallis’s English remained at the level of life language. The doctor found a black doctor who understood Somali. The black man who originally served as a translator completely distorted the doctor’s goodwill and accused Wallis of showing her private parts to men as unclean, changing herself without authorization, betraying her parents and violating the nation and tradition. The doctor is still waiting to operate on Wallis, but Wallis began to doubt herself because of the translation of the black doctor.
Wallis walked out of the hospital and saw a Muslim woman in the window with only her eyes covered by black gauze. She recalled her life in Somalia before she fled.
The lens cuts back from those eyes to the scene of Wallis walking alone in the desert after she escaped from marriage. The long lens follows Wallis trudging, with thorns everywhere, puncturing the soles of her feet, and starving on leaves. In the moving lens of the romantic purple grassland twilight, Wallis never stopped. She walked through the thorns and came to Mogadishu and found her grandmother. When I asked why I had never met my grandmother, I learned that my mother also ran away from home and married the nomad who was not recognized by the family. Grandma said, “I also ask myself, is my daughter so happy? But it must be worthwhile to suffer these hardships.” Finally, I made up my mind to accept the operation.
Marilyn told her that when Donaldson had taken pictures for the Queen of England, she found Donaldson after recovering from surgery and formally set foot on the road of modeling. With the help of Donaldson and Marilyn, she has an excellent appearance. She teaches her to speak English, wears high-heeled shoes and walks the catwalk, and starts to develop smoothly. The agent is also very happy to have such an excellent cash cow. When Wallis wanted to go out of London to the world, there was a problem with her visa.
At the time of the coup in Somalia, she was wandering alone in London and had no language. She did not understand anything. She did not consider the issue of visa expiration. But now, she may be sent back to Somalia for this reason. Fortunately, the landlady’s wife has some ways to help her solve the visa problem. But she didn’t expect that there was a problem with the visa. She was still detained by the Immigration Bureau. The landlady’s wife, annoyed by her mistakes, offered bail and released Wallis.
For a time, Wallis had no money and no job. She also needed to report to the Immigration Bureau regularly. However, she chose to fake marriage and married Neil. She thought Neil was just kind, but she didn’t expect that Neil had a deep affection for her. Fortunately, Neil always respected her very much and didn’t act out of line.
In order to pay off the arrears as soon as possible, she accepted a group of nude photos taken by the photographer Donaldson. Neil also changed from being gentle and kind to being irritable and irritable, and the two had to live together in order to cope with the immigration bureau. The Immigration Bureau often comes to the inspection in the middle of the night. Fortunately, the two people hide very well. Finally, after the expiration of one year, the two people separated smoothly.
Since then, Wallis has gradually become a supermodel and traveled around the world. She still often thinks of Jackson in the bar. When she finally got the chance to meet, Wallis found another girl beside Jackson, and she had to flee in a panic.
As her fame continued to expand, BBC TV reporters decided to interview her and shoot a documentary for her. This time, she remembered her past and wanted more people to understand the suffering of African women. What changed Wallis’s life was not the day when she became a famous model from a shepherdess, but the day when her body was stitched up with thorns.
“At that time, I was only three years old, and one day I was given more rice than usual. I don’t know why. My mother took me to a stone ground where an old lady was waiting for us. She took out a rusty blade from her cloth pocket, and my mother pulled open my legs. The old lady cut off my clitoris, labia major, labia minor and other sexual organs directly with that blade. Without anesthesia and disinfection, I was allowed to tear my heart The cry of the lungs. I saw that her hands were full of blood, and she sewed up my pudenda with thorns and white thread, leaving only small holes as big as toothpicks. ” After the completion of circumcision, Wallis had a high fever due to wound infection, and did not lose her life due to circumcision like her sister.
She was given the opportunity to speak at the United Nations, and this time she chose to go forward bravely. At the end of the speech, Wallis was silent for a few seconds, and said slowly: “If my experience can let everyone work together to change the fate of women, abolish this meaningless ceremony as soon as possible, and let girls no longer suffer from such pain, then I am proud of myself!”
With the efforts of Wallis, she made the inhuman feudal bad habit – “circumcision” – widely concerned. She has saved many women in the world who are being or will be persecuted by “circumcision” like her, but the bad habit of “circumcision” has not been completely abolished in all parts of the world, and there are still a small number of regions that maintain this custom, which is appalling.
