'Maria Full of Grace' review
'Maria' puts a human face on the drug trade and the search for the American Dream
By Heidi Moore
Published: November 2nd, 2004 | 5:25pm
After watching Maria Full of Grace, you’ll think a little more about where illegal drugs come from. And not just geographically. Before drugs like heroin end up with your friendly neighborhood dealer, they’re ingested — and excreted — by desperate people looking for quick money and a way out.
Maria Full of Grace follows one of these so-called drug mules, a 17 year old named Maria Alvarez, out of South America and into New York. The recipient of various awards including the Sundance 2004 Dramatic Audience Award, the film is a tale of the flinching hardships and sharp consequences that are part of the baggage in this journey for something better.
Played with restraint and subtle grace by first-time film actress Catalina Sandino Moreno, Maria is a smart, spirited young woman trapped in a small town in Colombia. She works a dead-end job and lives in a cramped house with three generations of her family. Tellingly, there are no men in this household. Her mother and sister struggle without husbands or boyfriends in the picture, relying on Maria’s low-wage job of de-thorning flowers at a local plantation.
Early in the film, Maria embarks on a jolting, early-morning bus ride to work. Anyone who’s grown up in, or traveled to, Latin America will recognize this scene as one that plays out for millions of rural workers below the border. Maria, intelligent and resourceful, wants more from life than this. But she falls into the same predicament as her mother and sister: she gets pregnant and loses her job. Desperate for a means of escape, she falls prey to a drug-smuggling ring.
Frantic, Maria accepts a charismatic new acquaintance’s offer of a well-paying job involving “travel.” She knows, and we know, that this isn’t exactly a corporate courier gig. But she’s determined to make some fast cash — whether for herself or her family, it isn’t quite clear. For the first half of the film, Maria seems pulled along by circumstances beyond her control. The danger escalates bit by bit, as it would in real life, so that only after she’s in over her head does she realize the implications of what she’s agreed to.
From the moment she arrives in Bogotá to when she boards the plane with 50 pellets of heroin in her stomach, Maria exudes quiet resolve. She conditions her throat for swallowing the drug pellets by practicing with huge grapes. Watching herself in her bathroom mirror, she calmly wills herself to relax her throat and suppress her gag reflex. It’s hard to watch, but even more uncomfortable is the scene in which she swallows the pellets. First a creepy doctor sprays her mouth with anesthetic, and then the drug boss presses her stomach to move the pellets around and make room for more.
Such unwavering scenes are characteristic of the naturalistic, almost documentary approach of first-time feature film director Joshua Marston. This pared-down style works well with the material — the moving story of Maria and her fellow traffickers speaks volumes without needing to be cranked up to 10. There’s also a religious undertone to this sequence, but nothing that isn’t obvious from the film’s posters; Maria’s a devout Catholic, and the white pellets are a bizarrely sinister version of the host.
The members of the drug ring come across as two-bit predators, from Franklin (John Alex Toro), the charismatic boy who first suggests the “travel” gig, to the drug boss who asks Maria dehumanizing questions about her bowel movements. Each one preys on the desperation of the person one rung beneath them. Even though they don’t assault her (at least, not exactly), they seem like sexual predators — choosing attractive, “well-bred” young women who are less likely to be stopped at the border.
While the film centers on Maria, she’s just one of several mules on the same flight to New York. (If one gets caught, it’s easier for the rest to get through.) On the plane with her are her best friend Blanca (Yenny Paola Vega), who’s pudgy and careless and not nearly as determined as Maria, and her quasi-mentor Lucy (Guilied López), who has as much going for her as Maria but keeps going back to smuggling. In the hotel room where they’re basically held captive to “expel” the time bomb-like drugs, something happens to Lucy, and Maria and Blanca decide to make a run for it. In a fortuitous move (Maria’s decision, of course), they end up in Queens on the doorstep of Lucy’s sister.
The film’s tagline is “Based on 1,000 true stories,” and ultimately that’s what Maria is about. We often forget — because we can — what great lengths people go to in order to get to this country. For every person working a low-wage job in America, there are thousands like Maria who almost died to get here. Maria Full of Grace gives voice to their struggle.
Bottom photos by Christobal Corral Vega © 2004, courtesy of HBO Films / Fine Line Features
Issue #29
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