Maria Full of Grace

Perhaps the most important factor in rating a film "positive" or "negative" is if the viewer buys the central conceit of the film. If the viewer simply doesn't believe the main conflict of the film, everything else flows in a negative direction. If the viewer DOES believe the central conflict, then the viewer is more likely to enjoy the film.

And that was my problem with Joshua Marston's "Maria Full of Grace," a 1994 Colombian-American film that introduced Catalina Sandino Moreno to the world when she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress. Moreno plays Maria Alvarez, a young Colombian woman who accepts a job as a drug mule, bringing drugs into the US in pellets she has swallowed, and will deliver when she shits them out.

I didn't believe that her situation was bad enough to accept a job that everyone knows is so risky. Spoiler alert: of the four girls who serve as mule's on Maria's flight, one dies when a pellet bursts in her stomach, another is arrested at immigraiton, and Maria barely escapes arrest when she is unable to be x-rayed due to her pregnancy.

So she's 17, unmarried, pregnant, and working a dead-end job (de-thorning roses) she doesn't particularly like. But she has a stable home, loving although not-wealthy family, and is healthy and pregnant. Which is MORE reason she wouldn't take the drug job.

Sure, the backstory of how Marston immersed himself into both Colombian and drug culture for several years to make sure his screenplay is factually accurate and realistic appeals to a wannabe screenwriter like myself, who would do the same thing if I ever were able to take the time to write a screenplay. And the fact that the "don" of Little Colombia in Queens, NY, was played by Orlando Tobon is fascinating, since he's actually the "don" of Little Colombia and not an actor at all.

But I just couldn't buy into the conceit that Maria's situation was SO dire that she would risk so much to both her and her unborn child for a few thousand bucks. And as such, I couldn't buy the entire film.