re:mote voices

Title:Maria Full of Grace
Cast: Catalina Sandino Moreno, Yenny Paola Vega, Virgina Ariza, Johanna Andrea Mora, Wilson Guerrero, John Álex Toro, Guilied Lopez, Patricia Rae
Director: Joshua Marston

In modern cinema the nationality of a film has become a fluid thing, so that a film isn’t necessarily quite what it seems. Maria Full Of Grace is one such example, the film follows a group of Columbians, starts in Columbia, and is shot in Spanish. But right at the start we see that this is a film that is made by HBO, one of the more prominent American TV companies in recent years, and the film itself is written and directed by American born Joshua Marston. Regardless the cast is predominantly Columbian, and for most of them this is their first film role.

Maria is a 17-year-old Columbian girl. Despite the fact that she works in a flower factory it is still pretty much sweat shop conditions. There she gets paid minimum wage, money that is pretty much taken off her by her mother, to pay for her sister’s baby. To round things off her boyfriend isn’t up to much, sure he is interested in her for sex, but not much more. So when she realises she is pregnant she is not very happy. Her boyfriend is useless, she doesn’t want to be like her sister, and she quits her job when the morning sickness kicks in, since they won’t give her any support.

Which leaves the question - now what? Of course that is the point where she is approached by a man and offered the job of drug’s mule. Swayed by the possibility of easy money, Maria decides to go for it. On the plus side, she meets Lucy, an experienced mule who provides all the advice she needs to get through, on the negative side, her best friend Blanca wants in on the game. Before she knows it, Maria is on a plane on her way to America, her stomach filled with drug pellets, and Lucy and Blanca are on the same flight. We all just know something is going to go wrong.

Maria Full Of Grace is a decent film, which I enjoyed, and it is getting considerable acclaim. Though part of me feels as though it were a little toned down, as though it were pulling some punches. I guess there is no need for the film to push any limits, it still gets the general ideas across with out feeling the need to go as far as some of the films it could be compared to - like Lilya 4-Ever or Shiwu for instance. We never feel as though Maria is as degraded as Lilya was, and the drug-swallowing scene is certainly more palatable than the parallel one in Shiwu. That same part might even go as far as to suggest the extent that Maria is set up before she becomes a mule might be pushing the character a little - is it really necessary for someone’s life to be bad on every front before they jump at the opportunity to make what is declared to be easy money? Though in saying that, her friend Blanca kind of answers that one, dim-witted and hungry for the money, she doesn’t seem to have nearly the amount of problems Maria does but is still up for it.

Regardless of where the film does or doesn’t go far enough, whether it is an American outing or Columbian, the film is well shot and the cast give good performances.