From the start, it's impossible not to like seventeen year old Maria Avarez (Catalina Sandino Moreno.) The opening shots of Joshua Marston's powerful first feature "Maria Full of Grace" quickly establish character. We see Maria, mind-numbingly bored, her fingers covered in Band-Aids, as she removes sharp thorns from flowers at her job at a rose plantation, and later, Maria with her boyfriend, still bored, as she breaks away to climb up to the roof of a two story abandoned house just to see the view. Maria is tough, independent, and intelligent. She is also strikingly pretty, and achingly, palpably, full of longing.
Long before Maria puts herself in the path of danger, she is someone we care and worry for. She lives in an overcrowded apartment. Her mother doesn't understand her. Her boyfriend certainly isn't worthy of her. After she quits at the flower factory, she needs to find a new job - and chances are there isn't anything better waiting for her. Worse, she is pregnant. Maria clearly wants so much from life, and so little seems possible. When Maria meets Franklin, who can get her a high paying gig as a drug mule, trafficking heroin from Colombia to the United States, the worry we feel for Maria positively skyrockets.
Through Maria's story, we learn what it means to be a drug mule. Like Stephen Friar's terrific "Dirty Pretty Things" about illegal immigrants in London who earn cash by giving up organs, Marston completely immerses us in a harrowing, alternate universe where young women without hope ingest sixty-two heavy rubber pellets filled with heroin and travel long distances to seedy unknown hotel rooms just to make their way in life.
The presentation of logistic details is never less than compelling; what once was an obscure concept becomes real. The stereotypical image of a Colombian drug dealer, a handsome Al Pacino type in a slick suit with a machine gun, has been replaced with the terrified faces of women. Not only Maria, but three other women are on her flight from Colombia to New York, her childlike friend Blanca, the seemingly more worldly Diana who says she is making one last run, and yet another woman whose name we never learn as she is taken from the custom's office in handcuffs.
"Maria Full of Grace" is a successful film because it connects on an emotional level. Wisely, Marston decided not to make an overt political statement. Instead, he focuses on the intimate details of one woman's story. Catalina Sandino Moreno, making her film debut as Maria, gives a moving performance that will stay with you.
