Drug smuggling has given rise to such urban legends as the hollowed-out dead baby (the "crack-o'-lantern"?) and though the idea of drug mules--people who swallow rubber-encased drugs before boarding international flights--sounds like another, apparently they do exist. (Click here for a Dutch news report on the phenomenon, including an X-ray; click here for a BBC interview with a Colombian drug mule now in prison in Britain.)
In Maria Full of Grace, the new movie by first-time writer-director Joshua Marston, this is how a mule brings drugs into New York from Colombia: the powdered drug is spooned into the cut-off tips of surgical gloves which are tied off and compressed to form pellets about the size of two red globe grapes (which she's coached to swallow whole for practice). Having taken medication to slow her digestion, the mule then downs 50 or 60 of these pellets (the number depends on the size of the mule) and flies into the metropolitan area. On arrival, handlers take her along with two other mules to a motel in New Jersey and wait for them to excrete the pellets, which they have to wash themselves, wipe with toothpaste so as not to offend the handlers, and collect in a bag for counting and weighing. (In a technique called "shotgunning" (see this OffOffOff interview with Marston), multiple mules are sent on each flight, so that if one gets caught it will serve as a distraction and permit the others to get through.) As the Dutch report explains, a Colombian mule can earn between $5,000 and $8,000 per trip, coming from a country where the average annual per capita income is around $2,000.
It's hard to imagine workers used more impersonally in their trade than drug mules, and Marston attempts to restore individuality to his title character whose function as a smuggler, after all, is to pass through the world unnoticed. As Marston says in the OffOffOff interview:
[W]hat I was interested in doing was not telling a story that we've seen already from the top down, from the point of view of the DEA agent or the drug trafficker [i.e., Steven Soderbergh's Traffic (2000)], but telling it from the bottom up, from the point of view of someone fairly low on the totem pole who is suffering through this experience. And in that way, I wanted to make it not so much "matter-of-fact" but everyday.... It was, "What is it like to do this," rather than, "What's the most dramatic, glitzy, hyped-up way that we could do it with the flash of 'Miami Vice'."
Marston conducted extensive research, both among recent Colombian immigrants in Queens and in Colombia, and centered the story around the seventeen-year-old Maria (Catalina Sandrino Moreno) who, at the beginning, works on a flower plantation outside Bogotá stripping thorns off roses in preparation for bundling and shipping. We see enough of her repetitive job and of her quarrelsome home life with her mother, older sister, and the sister's baby, who all depend on her pay, to know that she'd be open to a big-money temptation. She also needs money because she's pregnant and morning sickness causes her to lose her job. She is sensible enough not to marry her boyfriend Juan, whom she tends to challenge petulantly and who responds defensively. (Marriage would entail either moving in with her family, who dislike him, or making a round dozen at his family's home, and in any case they're not in love.) Maria comes across as a fundamentally level-headed girl whose rebellious streak combines with extremely narrow opportunities to lead her down a bad path.
Article comments
1 - Chris Knipp
Admirable review, the most thorough I've seen, and your supportive material and footnoting are most welcome (this is a topic we need background on before we can really evaluate the film properly). Thanks a lot for this. I too noted the lack of humor; the lack of quirky detail -- features of a certain over-earnestness. I think the film is being rather overrated at present, but I'm nonetheless glad Marston was able to make it and did such a good job and got such a great start on what could well be a fine career as a director.
Did you note -- did anybody say -- why they shot in Ecuador rather than Columbia for most or all of the Colombian sequences? I thought Marston said somewhere but can't find it.
2 - Alan Dale
Thanks for the comment. Always welcome to hear someone out there is responding to my work.
As for shooting in Ecuador: "'The original intention of the project was that we would go to Colombia â€" just me, Paul, and the d.p., Jim Denault â€" and [work with] an entirely Colombian cast and crew,' remembers Marston. 'Unfortunately we couldn't shoot in Colombia because of the political situation. We shot in Ecuador instead, but we’re doing everything possible to safeguard all that which is Colombian about the project â€" and part of that is to make sure that everyone who is on screen is actually Colombian.'" [http://www.spanix.com/html/ShowNews.asp?ID=811&PG=8]
3 - Fernando Rivas
I found your review of Maria Full of Grace somewhate insensitive, though not entirely off the mark. I don't think there's too much playable humor in the airplane bathroom scene and the defecated pellets. I do think Catalina, the actress in the role, should have given more terror to the moment but I don't think a bit of slapstick would have been the way to go.
Your comparison to her performance with legendary Hollywood actresses is kind of laughable. You are mixing apples and oranges. This woman comes from a background as different from Hollywood as Earth from Venus. To hold her to that yardstick is blatantly ridiculous.
As to Marston's choice to include bits of the actual life of the actors in the script your comment about them not being real people shows a remarkably sterile disconnect. While they are not involved in the drug trade their connection with their homeland is a crucial part of this story and the
authenticity which results from their
particular brand of language and custom is as rare in films these days as truth.
You also question Maria's choice to get involved in the drug trade as unreal insofar as there is other work available. If you listen to the director's commentary on the DVD he addresses this issue. Maria is not perfect as a character and is not meant to be. She has made a bad choice - not just because of necessity - but partly because of her rebellious nature.
Another point of contention for you is the fact that the customs police release her. Again, Marston addresses this in the commentary. Fear of lawsuits and investigations as well as procedural change that might result from taking action keeps the agents from holding Maria. I agree, however, that the
resolution of this issue in the film is a bit too pat. They might have been able to keep her at least a day or two to check for the 'return' of the pellets.
In general I think you're looking for something in this flick that is not there and not meant to be. What is there, Marston's view of the drug trade and Colombian culture, is, from my own experiences in NYC, right on the money - or at least as a film is going to get these days.
4 - Alan Dale
Well, we disagree about slapstick. But I don't consider a lack of humor in itself to constitute sensitivity, or any other virtue.
Actually, I think you're the one mixing apples and oranges when you write "this woman comes from a background as different from Hollywood as Earth from Venus," if by "this woman" you mean Maria rather than the actress playing her. My point: by using a nonprofessional actress Marston doesn't get the advantage of all that a professional actress, because of her drive and experience, can bring to a working-class role. Barbara Stanwyck was working class but Constance Bennett wasn't--neither was "from Hollywood." But it doesn't matter b/c they worked as ACTRESSES not demographic representatives.
"Remarkably sterile disconnect" paragraph: You haven't made yourself clear. I'm not talking about the actors, I'm talking about the characters, and I repeat: Characters are not real people, not even when Colombians are cast as Colombians. As for the contributions of the actors to the script, you hardly need remind me of that since I singled it out for praise earlier in the review you're ostensibly responding to. My point in that later paragraph is that the movie would offer a greater aesthetic experience if the writer-director had shaped the material more. He's too respectful of his characters, as if they were real people, towards whom one does want to act respectfully. But with realistic fictional characters it's part of the author's JOB to second-guess them, to show their mixed motives, to satirize them, to see them not only as they'd like to be seen. The more varied a response he evokes, the more fully human they seem. By contrast, Maria has two dimensions: she gets into trouble b/c she's stubborn but we have to sympathize with her b/c she's had limited opportunities.
I didn't say Maria's choice to get involved in the drug trade was "unreal" insofar as there is other work available. (What does "unreal" mean when we're talking about a fiction film, all of which by definition is "unreal"? Did you mean "unrealistic"?) I said that without telling us what her other choices were, Marston could not give us a panoramic view of Colombian society that would enable us to understand her choice in a broader social context.
While it's interesting to know what Marston said on the DVD, that commentary isn't part of the movie, which I saw and reviewed before the DVD was released. None of what you paraphrased from his commentary, however, contradicts what I said in the review.
Did you mean for your tone to be so p.c.-authoritarian? It's only a movie, it's only a movie review.