Maria Full of Grace

Review – Catalina Sandino Moreno, in her Oscar nominated performance, stars as Maria Alvarez, a hardworking seventeen year old Colombian with few options and a lot on her mind.  The film, winner of the 2004 Sundance Audience Award, excels at subtlety and simple reality.  Not flashy or over zealous, not even dumbed down or reveling in it’s lack of budget, Maria Full of Grace is one of the best examples of what can be done in an Independent Film.

Provide an interesting take on an old genre.  Maria Full of Grace takes a seemingly typical drug-runner film and gets beyond the stereotypes and into the individuals involved.  It’s displaying a heart I haven’t seen, in film, in quite some time.  This is most notably achieved through the quality of casting.  When you’ve no money to blind an audience you have to rely on raw talent, both with your crew and with your cast.  Maria Full of Grace excels on both counts.

Joshua Marston wrote and directed Maria Full of Grace as a way of looking at the drug wars being heralded by the U.S. and other nations from a very internalized front.  A front with reasons and justifications, with hopes, and with greater consequences than can be imposed by any form of government or legal institution. The most interesting facet of Marston’s film is in the simple way individuals can find (or lose) themselves in becoming a part of the drug trade.  Marston delivers a tangible and human story that for the audience becomes as inescapable as it does for its characters.

-m-