Maria Full of Grace

Maria Full of Grace is a fictional film by Joshua Martson, released in 2004. With the subtitle “based on 1000 true stories”, the film details the life of a seventeen year old girl in desperate need of a higher income. Maria, the main character, works de-thorning flowers for very little money. After an altercation with her boss, Maria decides to quit and pursue a different job. She intends to travel to the capital to meet with a friend about her work, and perhaps get training to work as a maid. However, her ride there, a man named Franklin, offers her a job smuggling cocaine into the United States. In desperate need of money, she takes him up on the offer. In order to prevent detection by TSA, she must swallow large pellets of cocaine wrapped in vinyl gloves. She has a run in with the authorities who suspect her of smuggling, but she is pregnant and unable to be x-rayed to prove that she’s hiding drugs in her stomach. 

This film is truly heartbreaking to watch. The director knows exactly how to make the viewer empathize with a character, and I often found myself mirroring her facial expressions. To me, that’s a key indicator of a well done film. I was so immersed in the film that it felt like I was living through what Maria was. The drug trade is no joke. It’s a matter of life or death. This film does a beautiful job of illustrating that sentiment. One of the other girls working for the drug trade, Lucy, starts feeling very sick on the plane, and continues to worsen as they enter New York to deliver the drugs. It is implied that one of the pellets ruptured or leaked in her stomach, and that notion is later confirmed. Upon the girls’ arrival in New York, they are taken by two men to a hotel to finish the deal. Lucy continues to worsen, and was ultimately killed by the two men. Maria and another of the girls, Blanca, are awakened to the men taking Lucy’s dead body out of the hotel, and the bathroom is covered in blood. This scene was jarring to watch, and the director did an immaculate job showing just how easy things can go south when smuggling drugs in the manner that the girls did. 

In this film, Maria was clearly targeted to participate in the drug trade. Knowing the implications and risks associated with it, the people working for this business actively target and seek out women in need of a job. This is violence. While not directly physical, it is still violence. The direct and purposeful targeting of young women solely for the purpose of taking advantage of them is textbook gender bias. Although Maria Full of Grace doesn’t focus on gender-based violence as its main plot, gender-based violence plays a large role in taking the film along its storyline. 

Maria Full of Grace is a wonderfully raw and human film. It gives so much reality to the illicit drug trade and passive gender bias. Maria Full of Grace beautifully illustrates the reality of what these women go through to make money. It’s grueling, heartbreaking, and eye-opening.