Year: 2004
Cast: Catalina Sandino Moreno, John Álex Toro, Johanna Andrea Mora, Virginia Ariza, Yenny Paola Vega, Guilied Lopez, Patricia Rae, Orlando Tobón, Rodrigo Sánchez Borhorquez, Charles Albert Patiño, Wilson Guerrero, Jaime Osorio Gómez, Selenis Leyva, Ed Trucco
Director: Joshua Marston
Nominations: Best Actress (Moreno)
Give me a minute, gotta let the heart palpitations stop.
Phew, okay. It's just that while watching this, I was alternately afraid I was gonna cry, puke or have a panic attack.
I remember back in 2004 this film took the critics by storm, while the rest of the English-speaking world was barely aware of it. They missed out, and the critics were absolutely right.
What I love about movies like this is how authentic they feel. I didn't enjoy Being Julia for several reasons, one of which was how obvious it was that everyone in it was acting, and I would say they were trying to out-ham each other but really, everyone was obviously holding back from taking too much attention off its leading lady. With Maria Full of Grace, it felt so honest on every level that you feel like it wouldn't be much different if it were a documentary.
Which it almost is. The tagline for this movie is "Based on 1000 true stories", as it's a very authentic look at what drug mules go through, and why they get into it in the first place.
Maria Álvarez (Catalina Sandino Mareno) is a seventeen-year old poor Colombian girl forced to not be in school and spend her days working in a flower plant de-thorning roses to support her family, which includes her working mother (whose salary doesn't cover even half the household needs), and non-working sister, an unwed mother who stays at home to care for her newborn son, meaning that all the money Maria's meager wages bring covers more than half the entire income for the house.
To make matters worse, her boss (Rodrigo Sánchez Borhorquez) is a jerk who seems to pick on Maria more than the others, her boyfriend (Wilson Guerrero) is a bit of an idiot, and Maria is now beginning to suspect she's pregnant. After puking on the job and getting a dressing down from her boss (who completely fails to recognize that Maria doesn't feel well and believes she's just slacking off, even after she throws up), she quits. There aren't many jobs available to someone her age and without much schooling, so what is she to do?
After meeting the charming Franklin (John Álex Toro) at a party, she ends up agreeing to become a mule. Before she even commits herself, she realizes her friend Blanca (Yenny Paola Vega) has already agreed, and she's slightly encouraged to do so herself after meeting Lucy (Guilied Lopez) who has successfully muled twice before and has advice that will help Maria.
There are several risks involved to Maria's health, not the least of which is that if one of the pellets of heroin bursts while in Maria's stomach, she will die. And she has to swallow 60 of them, which strikes me as a crap-ton, but apparently is based on reality, as is the idea that a large man would be made to swallow a hundred.
At this point, the movie becomes incredibly tense. I was on the edge of my seat for the last half of it. What makes this so much worse is knowing that it does happen, and that the risks are incredible. In fact, Maria isn't alone, as Blanca, Lucy and at least one other lady are all on the same flight to America, all stuffed with dozens of heroin pellets, and things get very tense when Lucy, whom Maria had started thinking of as a mentor, starts to feel sick and realizes a pellet likely has burst inside her.
So how does Moreno do? Incredible. I don't know why we've seen so little from her since, or at least so little that lives up to the potential she shows here. Very pretty, but in a real way rather than a Hollywood way, and simultaneously tough and fragile, her performance as a girl pushed to the edge and willing to undertake work she'd never consider in other circumstances is raw, heartbreaking and riveting. Several times while watching her, I wondered what I would do if circumstances brought me as low as hers had. This is what keeps her sympathetic, even as she gets deeper and deeper into her new "career", running more and more out of options. And of course there's the constant thought that she's pregnant, and what is all this doing to her baby? Moreno really sells all the conflicting emotions while not becoming overwrought.
My next two films will be Million Dollar Baby and Vera Drake to finish off this year and category, and then I'll be taking a bit of a break from posting, but not from viewing. See, most of the watching I get to do comes from streaming services, and movies can disappear from those without warning, and also in part it's from some movies I've borrowed from friends and family, and I don't want to be accused of holding onto those forever, so I'm going to prioritize the borrowed and streamed movies first, but I'll keep doing draws, they just might be very slow in posting, and my memories of the films might be a few weeks old from this point rather than fresh.
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