Usually I am not very good at expressing my feelings directly after an experience. My writing fits--in the way of prose--a bit into Wordsworth's definition of poetry: "Emotion recollected in tranquility."
Yet, as I sat watching the moving documentary, My Khmer Heart, about Australian, Geraldine Cox's efforts to administer and finally save a Cambodian orphanage and some sixty children, I knew that I would need to write about it while the film was fresh in my mind.
My Khmer Heart documents beautifully how Geraldine became a mother to orphan children amid the complex political and social background of Cambodia in the 1990s. Always in the background is the "nation of orphans" created during the terrible and brutal regime of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge in the late 70's, a time when the ancient kingdom of Kampuchea almost vanished.
As an employee of the Australian diplomatic service posted to Phnom Penh in 1970, Ms. Cox experienced firsthand the suffering of the Cambodian people and efforts to rebuild their society following Pol Pot and the subsequent regimes. The film is directed by Janine Hosking, narrated by Peter Ustinov, and stars Geraldine Cox, Prime Minister Hun Sen, and others as themselves. The movie also documents Ms. Cox's personal life and times and her often amazing personal struggles to have children after trying to conceive for several years.
True to form, the flaming redhead with the "earth mother" proportions approaches trying to get pregnant with the utmost passion possible.
Laughing wildly, Geraldine says, "I'm never going to die wondering." She then relates her many sexual adventures with possible progenitors as the camera ranges over several photos of men, who Cox distinguishes variously by nationality and profession. Among her many lovers she points out "a Somalian ambassador, an Omani charge d'affaires, a Lithuanian forklift driver.'
She eventually adopted a child, a girl, whom she called Lisa Devi who turned out to have muscular dystrophy and other health problems, including autism. Though she struggled mightily to care for the girl, she finally had to place her in special care.
Partly to sublimate her need for a child, she took over an orphanage, which had been set up in 1993 to look after children whose relatives had died fighting in the service of the royal family. Through betrayals and political skullduggery, she learns that she must give up the orphanage. Much of the film deals with her efforts to reclaim the orphanage, developing the skills of the children in sacred dance so they can give a performance to win the Prime Minister, Hun Sen, to the cause of the children.
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