40 ACRES FOR A MULE

REVIEWED - MARIA FULL OF GRACEThis Oscar-nominated drama has the tension of a documentary, writes Michael Dwyer

The tension becomes unbearable at the point in Maria Full of Grace when its young protagonist boards a plane from Bogota to New York, illegally transporting a few kilos of heroin inside her body. We know that nobody has forced her to carry this consignment, and that she's doing it for the money, and yet we fear for her and hope that she won't get caught. It's one of this film's many remarkable achievements that it makes us care so deeply for a willing smuggler of drugs.

As first-time writer-director Joshua Marston observes, this is not a true story, but it tells a story that happens every day, and that awareness is at the roots of our empathy for Maria Alvarez. She is introduced as a spirited 17-year-old living in cramped conditions with four generations of her family in a rural town north of Bogota, and earning a pittance in her assembly line job: taking the thorns off roses that will be exported in bouquets.

Maria is ripe for recruitment as a "mule" to take drugs into the US, and the camera observes dispassionately as she rehearses with large grapes before swallowing 62 latex-wrapped heroin pellets in the knowledge that she will die if even one breaks inside her. The information that she is pregnant heightens the tension as she takes the plane for New York.

Marston's thoroughly researched film is so clinically efficient in handling the build-up to that flight and its dramatic consequences that it has the authentic feel of a documentary. He wisely eschews didacticism in tackling the everyday exploitation of people driven by economic circumstances to act as drugs mules, and the pervasive corruption that implicitly condones this practice. Just as firmly, he avoids drawing Maria as a victim turned heroine in a triumphantly upbeat resolution.

Belying his inexperience and demonstrating true skill as a filmmaker, Marston grounds his movie in humanism and social realism to produce a quietly powerful thriller that is charged with palpable concern and dramatic urgency.

He demonstrates such ability with his actors that it would be hard for anyone to distinguish between the professionals and amateurs that constitute his cast. At its centre is the luminous young Colombian newcomer, Catalina Sandino Moreno, whose riveting portrayal of Maria in all her desperation and lost innocence deservedly earned her an Oscar nomination this year.