Forbidden Lies
Directed by Anna Broinowski
At Cinema Village Runtime: 104 min
Forbidden lies is so suspenseful, so surprising and so full of “Nuh- UH!” moments that it’s a shame to spoil its twists and turns in a review. Originally intended by documentary filmmaker Anna Broinowski as a defense of disgraced memoirist Norma Khouri—whose bestseller Forbidden Love exposed the horror of honor killings in Jordan—Forbidden Lie$ quickly spirals into something far more interesting and complicated, as the filmmaker finds herself sucked into her subject’s world.
Having successfully publicized herself as a Jordanian virgin who wrote a memoir about her best friend’s murder in Jordan at the hands of her father, Norma Khouri found herself at the center of a media shitstorm as sharp-eyed readers found 73 factual errors (including what countries border Jordan), and investigative journalists discovered that she was actually a married mother of two living in Chicago at the time the memoir was set.Through it all, Norma remained cool, explaining that she wrote a book about honor killings, not a travel guide to the Middle East, and that she’d simply changed the book’s time period to protect the innocent.
And for much of the documentary, we (and Broinowski) have a grudging respect for Norma. She changed facts and details to protect Dalia’s family, but she insists that the gist of her story is true, and her motives in raising awareness of honor killings pure. But Broinowski is as adept at illusion as her subject and tantalizingly holds back crucial bits of information about Norma’s past until just the right time to keep us on the edges of our seats.
The centerpiece of Broinowski’s film is a truly breathtaking trip she took to Jordan with Norma and Norma’s newly hired bodyguard (or was he?). As Norma’s ex planations and memories seem increasingly spun out of thin air and Broinowski becomes suspicious of her motives, the breadth of Norma’s talent as a con woman (a talent that has led to an ongoing FBI investigation of her sordid past) is made clear.When she doesn’t have a readymade answer to annoyingly specific questions, she blusters her way out of the conversation and then comes back with a better answer days later, constantly rewriting her story to make all of its pieces fit.
Forbidden Lie$’ only flaw is Broinowski’s stubborn refusal to ask Norma the truly tough questions.Why hasn’t Norma followed through on her pledge to donate a portion of her royalties to human rights groups? Why does she insist she’s protecting Dalia’s family, when they’re the ones who allowed her murder? Once Broinowski becomes a character in her own film, all objectivity has flown out the window, and we long for her to verbally excoriate Norma. Forbidden Lies has been dressed up with some impressive CGI effects, re-enactments, and viciously satiric juxtapositions (along with an inspired use of The Zombies’ “She’s Not There”), but all we really need is the delicate dance between the director and her subject, the one unwilling to insult a woman she believes in and the other enjoying their cat-and-mouse game. But by the doc’s end, how much of what Norma says is fact or fiction doesn’t matter as much as the entertaining, infuriating journey that Norma (and Broinowski) has taken us on.
