Maria Full of Grace is a sweet, sincere and even life-affirming story that never seems to get beyond its basic storyline.

The story follows Maria (Catalina Sandino Moreno), a 17 year old Columbian girl struggling to keep a job and help support her family, which includes a sister with a child and no husband. To make matters worse, Maria is about to be in the same condition – she has just discovered she’s pregnant and she’s not in love with the father.

Maria soon becomes aware of a drug smuggling deal that will pay enough to solve her problems. The only catch is she has to bring the drugs to America in pouches in her stomach. The whole operation carries risks of being caught by customs in the United States, or that the pouches will break inside her – which kills you. Maria takes the risk though, and nearly pays the price.

Maria runs into multiple troubles on her pilgrimage to America, where “everything is perfect.” Things don’t seem quite so perfect when she arrives and director Joshua Marston creates a picture of a decadent New York that really doesn’t look all that more appealing than the slums of Columbia.

Maria overcomes her trials with gentleness, love and, yes, even grace. It’s a tender story amid a gritty background, but there’s really not much else. The film makes a number of religious allusions – the movie poster shows Maria accepting a drug packet like the sacrament. The image is a good representation of the film. Maria’s always doing something bad for the sake of good. It’s a nice idea, but I never felt like it was developed like it could have been.

Perhaps the problem lies with the film’s a tagline, “Based on 1,000 true stories.” Yes, the film is a record of some terrible things that poor people have been going through to make some money – but that fact does not in itself make the film a good movie. Maria Full of Grace is actually a very simple story that follows Maria in some eventful, but not entirely interesting, ways.

Spanish

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