Review: Forbidden Lie$ (2009)

[Mark R. Leeper]

                         FORBIDDEN LIE$
                (a film review by Mark R. Leeper)

     CAPSULE: Norma Khouri became an international
     celebrity telling the story of her friend when
     she was living in Jordan.  The friend, Dalia, was
     a Muslim who fell in love with a Christian and
     then was murdered by her own father and brother in
     an honor killing.  But in all probability none of
     this ever happened.  Norma Khouri is (probably) a
     con artist supreme.  Documentary writer/director
     Anna Broinowski investigates Khouri's stories and
     her background and finds a bizarre story that grows
     ever more complex in Khouri's telling.  This is a
     film that would make a great double feature with
     Lasse Hallstrom's THE HOAX.  Rating: high +2
     (-4 to +4) or 8/10

Norma Khouri's story is a tragedy.  As a Muslim growing up in Amman
Jordan, Norma's best friend was Dalia.  Neither Norma nor Dalia
wanted the life that had been pre-ordained for them by their
families.  They wanted careers, not just to be married off to men
they did not choose and probably would not love.  As one of the few
careers that were open to them, they opened a beauty shop.  After
that Dalia did find herself falling in love.  But the man was not
one who would have been approved by her family.  In fact the man
was not even a Muslim.  He was a Christian soldier.  Dalia knew
that if her father found out about the relationship it could go
very bad for her.  Her father believed that he was the guardian of
virtue for his family.  Dalia's love for a Christian would make her
father very angry, and he would undoubtedly believe that it would
destroy the honor of the family.  So Dalia kept her love a secret
 from her family.  One day Norma went to see Dalia only to find that
Dalia was dead.  Dalia's family had found out about Dalia's love
and murdered her with knives.  When Norma saw her dead friend
laying in the morgue, Norma decided she no longer could live with
her family and could no longer even live in Jordan.  She fled for
her life and wrote the story of the incident in book form.

That is Norma Khouri's story.  She submitted it to an Australian
publisher who released it widely.  The book known as FORBIDDEN LOVE
or HONOR LOST became a bestseller in several languages and several
countries.  Norma Khouri's story took great courage to bring to the
world the story of Muslim honor killings.  Or perhaps a better word
would be that it took great "chutzpah."  The story was (probably)
totally fabricated by Khouri.  Khouri had a history as a confidence
trickster and though she denied the truth for a long time, the book
is likely a total fabrication.

Writer/director Anna Broinowski delves into the life of Khouri,
taking her camera to Australia, England, Chicago, and Amman.  As
Broinowski investigates she finds more and more contradictions in
Khouri's version of the truth.  And each time an inconsistency is
found, with a straight face Khouri adds more to the story and makes
it more complex.  Each contradiction is patched with a new story
tailor-made to win the sympathies of the listener.  Soon the
investigation turns up a story involving an elderly neighbor whom
Khouri (probably) conned out of half a million dollars.  Khouri
claims that she was forced to steal that money and the story goes
off in the direction of rape and incest.  Yet she has a talent to
tell her stories with a straight and attractive face that makes you
momentarily want to believe her.  By the end of the film Khouri's
story is nothing like it started out.

FORBIDDEN LIE$ is amusing and frustrating.  But it is undeniably
entertaining and one gets a certain amazement at the creativity of
Khouri's mind under pressure--much the same quality that Clifford
Irving has in THE HOAX.   I rate FORBIDDEN LIE$ a high +2 on the -4
to +4 scale or 8/10.

Film Credits: <http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0790808/>

What others are saying:
<http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/forbidden_lies/>


					Mark R. Leeper
					mleeper at optonline.net
					Copyright 2009 Mark R. Leeper