Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
a fautless masterpiece about poverty and the drugs trade, 14 Sep 2005
By A Customer
Joshua Marston wrote and directed Maria Full of Grace.
He produced the first draft of the script in 2 days but by the time he had modified it and done the filming, 5 years had elapsed.And it shows.This film is a faultless masterpiece that
depicts the full horror of women who act as "mules," taking drugs in their stomachs from Columbia to the United States.
Catalina Sandino Moreno,who plays Maria,is superb in the lead role,and the story is told from her perspective.
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18 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Outstanding portrait of a young woman, 7 Jan 2007
"Maria llenas eres de gracia," is one of the outstanding films of the new century, and one of the best I've seen in months. Joshua Marston, who wrote the script and directed, took a commercial idea--that of telling a story about the "mulas" who smuggle drugs into the US by swallowing pellets of cocaine or (in this case) heroin wrapped in latex which they later excrete. Should one of them burst before it is passed out of the body, it is likely the mule will die. It's a risky business in more ways than one, and only somebody desperate or foolish would do it.
So the first thing that Marston must do is establish Maria's character in such a way that we can believe she would do something like this. She is, on the one hand, an ordinary 17-year-old Columbian girl who works stripping the thorns from the stems of roses in a factory. She lives at home with her mother, sister and her sister's baby. She has a boyfriend. She has to work to help support the family. On the other hand she is a headstrong person, a pretty girl with a head on her shoulders.
But Maria is not exactly desperate. She is a bit of a gambler, somewhat foolish, no doubt, but she is also a strong person with great personal integrity. Marston allows us to see in the beginning of the film that she will take chances that others won't. She climbs up onto the roof of a building, a climb her boyfriend is afraid to make. We see her tell her boss (more or less) to take this job and shove it when he won't let her go to the bathroom. And we realize shortly thereafter why she needs to go to the bathroom more often than usual. We watch her tell her boyfriend about her predicament, and she does it in such a way that we can tell that she is searching for how he really feels. And when she finds out he doesn't really love her, at least doesn't love her the way she wants to be loved, she leaves him.
But now she is in a fix. Her job helped pay for the family's bills. Now the situation is set. Her character is set. The premise of the film can unwind: and so she meets a young man on a motorcycle who tells her how she can make some serious money smuggling drugs into the US.
Imagine how the average Hollywood director would fashion a movie from such a premise. There would be brutality, gun fights, car chases. Cardboard villains would exploit Maria and others like her. There would be some heroics and perhaps a knight in shining armor would save Maria.
But that is not how Marston plays it. He opts for realism and he doesn't wallow in the violence or the exploitation. He keeps the focus on Maria and her personal struggle to find herself and to deal with the circumstances she has gotten into. The characters are real, the situations are authentic, and the details are closely observed and realistic. We see Maria practice swallowing large globe grapes. We see the people in the drug-smuggling business and some of the other mules. We see the security people at the airport and the young men who watch the girls until the pellets are passed. There is no glamor among these characters. It is clear they are patterned after real people who could actually be in this ugly business. And in the end we see the triumph of Maria's character.
What makes this such an outstanding movie is not only the careful, clear and veracious way that Marston tells the story, but the compelling performance by Catalina Sandino Moreno who plays Maria. She is a very talented young actress who has the kind of beauty that suggests something close to nobility of character, if I may use such an old-fashioned phrase. It is this quality of hers that Marston captures and emphasizes. The result is one of the most arresting performances I've seen in quite a while. Moreno appears entirely real, completely divorced from any phony celluloid heroine. She became to me--and this is what all great actors can do--someone I know, someone I care about, and I was filled with emotion as the movie ended.
"This is a movie about a girl becoming a woman," is the way Moreno expressed it. Marston puts it this way, "I realized...I was making a film about a girl who was doing something universal in trying to figure out the meaning of her life." This is really what the story is about: becoming a woman in this world of risks and trade-offs, of dangers and obligations.
A movie that is a work of art and worthy of something more than the diversion of an evening should affect the viewer emotionally, intellectually and artistically. Maria Full of Grace is such a movie, a movie that comes along perhaps once a year, or perhaps only once in several years. It's that good.
By all means see this for Catalina Sandino Moreno who was nominated for Best Actress by the Academy in 2005 but lost out to Hilary Swank for her performance in Million Dollar Baby (2004). And see it for Joshua Marston who made it real.
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10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Full of what ?, 26 Aug 2005
I love it when you see a film you didn't expect to be good and it suprises you...it reminds you why you love to watch film. This movie took a traumatic and difficult subject matter and handled it with such sensitivity you cannot walk away without feeling genuinely moved. The story; a young 17yr old Colombian rose trying to grow but being de-thorned by the cultural traditions of her society, then attempts to escape by carrying drugs into America, manages to work on a multitude of layers without having the pretentious feel of many of its class mates. You can take what you want from this movie whether it be a gripping story or as I damning inditement into modern Western values - but either wany you must watch and decide for yourself.
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