Maria Full of Grace

Captivating and moving. Excellent. 8/10

I think if I'd been dating the rather drippy "Juan" (Wilson Guerrero) I might have been inclined to try out being a drug mule too, but when "María" (Catalina Sandino Moreno) discovers she is pregnant by this lad she realises that he isn't her future. Nor, it seems, is her family-funding, dead-end, job in the pot-plant industry. With her options limited, she encounters a woman who suggests that she take a lucrative job smuggling pellets to the USA - in her stomach. She has to learn to swallow these ping-pong sized bundles and then hope they don't rupture or get spotted by the scrutinising customs and immigration folks who are well used to looking for tell-tale signs of folks up to no good. By pure fluke, her pregnancy gets her off the hook and into New York where she is put up in a grubby hotel room and left to await instructions. She doesn't much like the look of the place, nor of her local contacts neither and so together with "Luci" (Guilied Lopez) and "Bianca" (Yenny Paola Vega) begins a series of really quite eye-opening adventures that disavow any thought they may have had of the "American Dream". Indeed, despite finally receiving their $5,000 they realise that they are probably worse off in this vast city of exploit or be exploited as they were back home in Bogotá. Time to get back home? This isn't the cheeriest of films but there is something effective and poignant about the convincing portrayal of the vulnerable but determined "Maria" by an on-form Moreno and also from the avuncular but really quite menacing Orlando Tobón as the ruthless "Don Fernando". There is also something of the vicious circle to the plot as the women find that their continued obedience isn't so much guaranteed by their presence in the Big Apple as by the threats being made against their families at home should they choose any form of independence or, as is much more likely, they find themselves apprehended by the authorities. It's an observation of there but for the grace of god, and contrasts powerfully the lucrativeness of this trade with the unimportance to the bosses of those who risk their lives transporting the goods.