One of last year’s big surprises come Academy Award time was the nomination of Catalina Sandino Moreno for the Best Actress statue for her work in Maria Full of Grace, a small film that made less than $7,000,000 in the United States. Although she did not win the award, her performance is just as outstanding as Hillary Swank’s winning role in the blockbuster Million Dollar Baby.
Moreno stars as Maria Alvarez, a pregnant seventeen year old who has just quit her job at a Colombian floral plantation. Tired of giving what little she makes to support her mother, grandmother, sister and nephew, Maria is offered a job as a “mule” by a man she meets at a block party. A “mule” swallows grape-sized packets of heroin — sometimes up to 100 of them — and, while the packets remain in the stomach, the mule takes a flight from Colombia to the United States, attempting to avoid detection by customs agents. Once inside the U.S., the mule expels the packets and gets paid $5000, a sum of money not easy to come by in Colombia.
After making the decision to make the dangerous journey, Maria meets Lucy Diaz (Guilied Lopez), who has made the trip twice before. Lucy gives Maria some pointers on how to make the journey without being caught. Before leaving for New York, Maria finds her friend, Blanca (Yenny Paola Vega), has also signed up to be a mule. Maria tries to talk her out of it, but Blanca resists the advice. Together, along with Lucy, the friends make the trip to the U.S. with a potentially lethal dose of drugs in their stomachs. And once they make it to New York, even if they do get past customs and get the drugs out of their stomachs, they’re not safe from harm.
Although the subject matter might sound sensationalist, the performances and the flow of the movie keep it fresh and real. Because of the independent nature of the film, I wasn’t sure what would happen next. I never thought the film was following any kind of formula and, as a result, the movie plays almost like a documentary. Writer/director Joshua Marston asks the viewer to see a different perspective than the typical American media’s version of “the drug war.” Since the audience can see the motivation behind Maria’s drug smuggling is not meant to subvert the American way of life but to make the best of one of the very few opportunities to make a living for herself and her baby, the customs agents are transformed into the “bad guys” even though they’re just doing their jobs.
By allowing the viewer to see why drugs offer the promise of a way out of poverty from such a different perspective than most of us are used to seeing, Maria Full of Grace is eye-opening without ever being preachy about its subject matter. Definitely worth seeing.
4.5 out of 5.0 stars
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