Maria Full of Grace (DVD)

Catalina Sandino Moreno is a revelation - in her debut performance, she plays María Álvarez, a 17-year-old Colombian girl who works in a sweat shop trimming flowers for a rather unsavoury boss. She ultimately quits after he verbally abuses her, and then discovers, to top things off, that she's pregnant. With the pressure from her mother and sister (who has a young child) to bring some money into the house, she decides to become a drug mule, carting narcotics from Columbia to New York. The reviews on this site point at finding no sympathy with Maria, because she of course creates this situation largely for herself. Whilst this is true, and the film does draw ...  Read the complete review

Unlike movies with similar exploitation themes, you may find yourself less sympathetic to the protagonist Maria as throughout her descent into drug traffiking, she is fully aware of what she is doing throughout. She is not coerced or threatened into the situation, and agrees to it through she want of a wage better than she gets stripping roses of their thorns at a local sweatshop factory. After swallowing several condom-wrapped parcels of cocaine, Maria travels with her fellow drug smuggling colleagues to the U.S., with one falling ill on the journey when a package bursts, and Maria avoiding detection only by being pregnant - the security forces unable to ...  Read the complete review