Maria Full of Grace



by Shari L. Rosenblum

A woman's personal journey from the belly of Colombia 's drug trade to the bowels of New York , Maria Full of Grace is harrowing in its straightforward simplicity. There is no heavy hand in this, no wagging finger, no clenched fist. It imposes no godly message, and insists on no irony in its call to prayer. A film that neither asks nor answers questions, it moves instead like a beam of light through a dark and intricate reality, steady and focused on its narrow path, and nothing more. It nags at us with the darkened spaces it cannot reach.

Seventeen-year-old Maria (Colombian actress Catalina Sandino Moreno) works at a flower factory, dethorning roses for their transport to the U.S., her bodily functions limited by the whims of her employer (bathroom breaks not to be overdone). At a crossroads in her life, she accepts the lucrative opportunity to serve some shady (shaded) men as transport across the U.S. border: for $5000, she will swallow 62 latex pellets, keep them in her belly, and release them to the players on the other side once they are excreted -- and cleaned. The reasons for her choice are clear -- and clearly calculated -- but they have little to do with the lies the shady men first tell her. She is victimized; but she is not victim. She never believes, for example, that the cargo is film, as they say, but the idea does resonate in certain aspects of her story -- metaphorically, referentially -- as does their bullet shape, their condom coating, the way they're fed, the way they're carried.

The size and number of the pellets is greater than expected, the task of swallowing them excruciating -- the hands of the men that feed them to her medically cold and shifting to cruel; the pressure on her insides is more than one could ever imagine to bear. The feminist angle is inevitable, and it is no accident that along with willed and unwilled accouchements (the transport not quite guaranteed in time), there are pregnancies past and present folded into the narrative -- just as it is no accident that the job she accepts echoes in its essence the very one she left. Hers is a story of circumstance. And she shares it here with two other women (a naïve but headstrong friend named Blanca (Yenny Paolo Vega), and a seasoned “mula,” Lucy (Guilied Lopez)) -- their circumstances different, but their choices just as clear. Moreno , whose only previous work was on the stage, gives herself over to the intimacy of film with compelling frankness. She gives the story its breath.

First-time writer/director Joshua Marston, a California native with NYU credentials, does not pretend to an inside perch. He does not lord over his women, pull their strings, condescend to pity them. He seems to stand comfortably outside the world he illuminates, giving reign to his characters, to the situations they create for themselves, allowing their voices to grow from within them. His gift is to navigate the very thin line between type and stereotype, and to sidestep the assumption of moral omniscience. The metaphors his film implies evolve naturally from his story. His touch is tender; there is compassion in his narrative; it takes us inside its subject, and its subject matter, and rather than lecture us, it awakens us slowly with an unexpected sympathy and an aching foreboding.

©2004 Shari L. Rosenblum
CineScene