Sometimes reality is the toughest pill to swallow... | Maria Full of Grace

An Indictment of More Than Drug Smugglers | Maria Full of Grace | Catalina Sandino Moreno, Virgina Ariza

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	• Maria Full of Grace Catalina Sandino Moreno, Virgina Ariza Hbo Home Video, 2004 average customer review:based on 139 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Making Human Beings into Drug Mules

A drug mule is a human being who agrees to, or is coerced into swallowing a large number of latex drug pellets filled with cocaine in order to smuggle the illicit narcotics into the United States. The movie tells how a group of women out of desperation become mules. It is a degrading, deeply dehumanizing, dangerous thing to do. If a pellet ruptures and the drugs get loose in the body, they can easily cause death. This small indie movie makes this experience human, tragic, and intimate to moviegoers. It carefully details the technique as the women practice swallowing whole grapes.
Maria, a beautiful, strong-willed woman chooses to be part of this very dangerous drug trafficking scheme. She is pregnant, terrified of being discovered, and feels trapped. She has lost her job in a fresh flower factory stripping the thorns and leaves off stems. The irony is that Colombia exports both flowers and cocaine. At one point Maria in New York passes a flower stand selling imported flowers.
The focus in this film is on women. It has good direction and fine acting. The ordinary scenes in Colombia and in New York City seem very authentic, realistic. The plight of these women is made very urgent and tragedy strikes in one case. It's a very affecting movie that documents the seriousness of this kind of crime that turns human beings into mules. Their bodies are used as containers, vessels in a vicious smuggling racket. Many will find it to be a devastating, instructive film.
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Sometimes reality is the toughest pill to swallow...

I got into a heated debate with a friend the other day about the difference between subtlety and lifelessness. He got all up in arms when I labeled Ed Harris's nomination for `The Truman Show' a joke. Now as many of you know, I love the movie, but I felt that Harris really added nothing to the film. He was less subtle and more hollow. So, when he said that I wouldn't appreciate subtleness if it hit me in the face I rattled off this little film and told him to bask in the glory that is Catalina Sandino Moreno and her brilliant use of subtle forcefulness. So, we watched the film together, and my adoration of her performance was deepened and I think I made my point.

This performance may be quiet, but it is in no way shape or form `hollow'.

`Maria, Llena Eres de Gracia' is a brilliant film, truly, from start to finish one of the most honest and raw films I have seen in recent years. The film feels so natural, which only adds to the emotional destruction the audience goes through while watching it. There is nothing that feels Hollywoodized or embellished in that overly dramatic heavy handed way that most films are done today. It is simply raw and gritty and truth; pure truth.

Here we are told the story of young Maria, a seventeen-year-old Columbian who lives with her mother and grandmother, her sister and her young nephew. She works hard every day dethroning flowers only to pay more than her share at home. When Maria winds up pregnant she is faced with a decision. Her boyfriend isn't the marrying type, and her job is less that satisfactory so she decides to leave town and try to find work elsewhere. That is when she is given the opportunity to make some quick and `easy' money. She is asked to become a mule, swallowing pellets of heroine and smuggling them into the states. She accepts, and her harrowing journey is one of danger, fear and ultimately self awakening.

The film, much like Moreno, is very subtle. There is nothing here that is over-the-top or any mere scene that begs for your attention the way that most films produced today do. The story is told in a very focused yet very earnest way. We see everything (almost everything) in a very point-blank manor. Nothing is glamorized, nothing is sugar-coated; nothing is depicted as anything other than reality. I think I first realized this when Maria has to wash off pellets after she went to the bathroom and then re-swallow them in the airplane bathroom.

Fearless.

I want to take a minute to applaud the Academy for nominating Moreno back in 2004 for Best Lead Actress. I often give the Academy a hard time for nominating gimmicky and obvious performances that take no imagination and really require no stretch of talent, but in 2004 they nominated five VERY worthy performances (albeit handing possibly the least worthy the award). Catalina Sandino Moreno delivers such a spellbindingly pure performance, never reaching too far and coming off as forced but always keeping her characters innocence and naivety a central part of her performance. Maria is sincere and genuine, yet confused and determined. This reads beautifully on the screen. She is gives such a radiant performance, one that is nuanced to perfection and such a dynamic force without being abrupt and outlandish.

First time actress Moreno (yes, this is her DEBUT performance) and newcomer writer/director Joshua Marston (he had one credit under his belt before this) are a brilliant team who mesh so well with one another to create a film that reaches the heart and stirs the emotions and will remain utterly unforgettable. Watching Maria grow as a person throughout this treacherous journey may be hard to take, but in the end the reward is beautiful beyond words.

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An Indictment of More Than Drug Smugglers

Painful and ugly, Maria Llena de Gracia is also a powerful experience of vicarious desperation and deprivation. The story of a village girl in Colombia whose family, novio, and job all fail her at the same moment. She rushes heedlessly into big trouble, which in Colombia can only mean the cocaine trade. Coke merchants and smugglers are not nice people; we know that, and to see this film as an indictment of their viciousness is only a fraction of the movie's content. It's also, and more importantly an indictment of the global economy, the Octopus of our era with far stronger tentacles than the railroad of the early 20th Century. The indictment is clear from the first scene of the movie, when ALL the young women of the community report for work through a high wire fence to the warehouse where roses are trimmed and wrapped for export to North America. There is no other work in the village, no subsistence, no options, no future. If it were in Mexico - and there are exactly the same horrible sweat-shops in NAFTAfied Mexico - one would have at least the option of illegal emigration to El Norte, but in Colombia, it's 'muling' drugs or maid service. Frankly, I doubt that many American viewers of this film really saw what it was about from the Colombian perspective. Stopping the drug traffic isn't just a matter of spraying lethal chemicals over the countryside or supplying arms and helicopters to the latifundistas who own the government, and it isn't just a matter of reducing demand from the two poles of American society - the marginalized Black and the overprivileged White - either. It's a matter of facilitating the recovery of a diverse local economy, in which most people can make a living and a few can even find opportunity without crime and violence.

The Spanish spoken in this film, by the way, is extremely hard to catch unless you've heard the rural dialects before. The "vos" forms are used throughout (vosotros in Spain, the second person plural) and slang is pervasive. Even my son, who went to public elementary school in Spain and who speaks like a native, had to have the English subtitles.

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Excellent, excellent

The plot seems no more than a mosaic of real life situations, the conclusion driven by most basic motives, known to be used since ancient Greek drama. The performance of Jaime Osorio Gomez as Javier is outstanding. With a short appearance he manages to dash the essence of the Latin American way: a continent brought to stress by forces too powerful to control has developed a societal and moral codex to live within. And we want Maria to stay in America, the land of the brave. The system works :).

Wonderful film!!

Wonderful movie with a great story that also sparked my husband and I to learn more about drug mules. Catalina Sandino Moreno does a WONDERFUL job as Maria. I speak Spanish but my husband does not, and he enjoyed watching it with subtitles, something he normally does not do. I speak "Spain Spanish" but have also worked with people from Columbia, Ecuador, Cuba, and Honduras.. if I hadn't worked with people from rural areas, I think it would have been hard for me to understand the dialects used. It's definitely what I call "street Spanish." But it is WONDERFUL, and the language gives a huge glimpse into Maria's life and culture.

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(Drama) Maria Alvarez (Catalina Sandino), a bright, spirited 17-year old, lives with three generations of her family in a cramped house in rural Colombia. Desperate to leave her job stripping thorns from flowers in a rose plantation, Maria accepts a lucrative offer to transport packets of heroin-which she must swallow-to the United States. The ruthless world of international drug trafficking proves to be more than Maria bargained for as she becomes ultimately entangled with both drug cartels and immigration officials. The dramatic thriller builds toward a conclusion so powerful and revealing it could only be based on a thousand true stories.

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