Maria Full of Grace

The host of Film Festival awards and a Best Actress Oscar Nomination for its lead actress gave me some idea of the quality of Joshua Marston's first picture, but from the start, it surpassed all my expectations.

The concept is unique, offering its audience a rare insight into the unseen struggles of the international drug market through the eyes of a lowly Columbian peasant girl, Maria (Moreno), as she embarks on a life-changing journey that could very well prove her undoing.

After falling pregnant, she is forced to face up to the tedium of her everyday life and realises that she wants something more for herself and her child. It is then that she is offered a way out of the monotony, but it is no easy route to tread.

She is given the chance to become a drug mule – one of the legions of lost souls who risk everything to smuggle drugs into the United States. Maria is no fool and knows the magnitude of the choice before her, but eventually she relents and sets a chain of events into motion that cannot be undone. She quickly takes aboard her cargo and heads off to face her destiny. However, she must confront far more than her fears if she or her child are to have any future.

It is an absolutely superb debut for Moreno, who carries the movie throughout and manages to be thoroughly believable, whilst putting an all too human face on the hidden victims of the drug trade. The rest of the cast too possess skills beyond their anonymous backgrounds which combine together to produce something very special indeed.

The war on drugs might be old news now but Marston has created a film that takes a much closer look at the underlying issues involved without resorting to the usual Hollywood clichés, and asks questions of the viewer that the establishment dares not. It focuses on individuals rather than epic set pieces but to me this is what makes it all the more powerful. It is truly an excellent film that I thoroughly recommend.

James Kopka