Maria Full Of Grace

Rating: M – Contains Violence, Offensive Language & Drug Use.
Duration: 101 mins.
Genre: Festival & Foreign.
Actors: Catalina Sandino Moreno, Yenny Paola Vega, Guilied Lopez, John Alex Toro, Patricia Rae.
Director: Joshua Marston.
Release Date: Available Now.

Maria Full Of Grace claims to be based on 1,000 true stories.

What it is, is a compelling, if occasionally hard to watch, fictional tale of Maria and her journey to becoming a mule for drug traffickers.

Maria Alvarez is a 17 year old girl from Colombia working minimum wage in a flower packing factory, earning money to help support her mother, her sister and her sister’s baby.

At times it seems to Maria that she has nothing left for her self.

Then she discovers that she’s pregnant, breaks up with her boy friend and finds another.

It’s this new male figure in her life – her father is conspicuous in his absence, whether this is to indicate that he is not around, or just not important in Maria’s life, we don’t know – that knows how she can make a better life for herself; become a mule.

Of course he doesn’t know she’s pregnant, and when she discovers how much she can make, she doesn’t think to tell him.

Despite what it may sound like, Maria isn’t really in it for the money, and the movie goes to great lengths to set the scene of Maria’s life.

You see Maria is representing 1,000 true stories, and as such her life is average. Her happy poverty is real, and her daily routine is uneventful at best.

So whilst the escapism of becoming a mule – it comes with free holiday’s in America – is an obvious pull for Maria, the real reasons she decides to become a mule are based more along the theme of needing a strong male influence in her life, and looking towards the future and how she’s going to raise a child in a household already far too dependant on her merge income.

Maria’s normalcy and her wholesome nice girl from next door is at odds of course with her career path.

When we think of the drug trade, most people will have nothing nice to say about anyone in any part of the chain.

Mules you see are just in it for the money.

But as Maria’s story asserts, we comfortable Westerners have got the wrong picture of these mules.

We see as the movie progresses that these young women have been duped into an industry they have no way of escaping. That they are nothing more than disposable containers to the drug lords, who factor in acceptable loss for every consignment they send out.

The glamour that sucks these girls in, is gone the instance they finish swallowing their perilous cargo, when they are warned in no uncertain terms what will happen if they go AWOL with the product.

But Maria stays positive, confident in the belief that this is just a one off, that she can walk away with a little bonus to help when the baby comes.

But life seldom travels the road you think, it should, and Maria is no exception.

The overriding theme of the movie is summed up in one of the closing scenes; at the Airport as Maria is waiting her return trip to Columbia. On the wall in the background is a statement in large letters; “It’s what’s on the inside that counts”.

On reflection of the story you’ve just watched unfold, the statement can be viewed on many levels; for the Drug Lord, what’s on the inside is his income, for Maria what’s on the inside is her future, a human life growing.

And then there’s the spiritual side, where God looks past our outward appearances and looks inside of us to see whom we really are.

It’s Maria’s spiritual journey that is surprisingly missing from this movie. A movie whose title and cover imagery implies some rather overt religious overtones.

But alas, this key part of Maria’s life is left uncovered, and we the viewer are left no quite knowing what in the end was driving Maria on her journey of discovery.

Food for thought:
Who decides the true value of human life?

Rent or buy?
If subtitled dramas are your thing then this is a human drama worth having in your collection, if not, rent it and be enlightened!