Maria Full of Grace (2004) on Netflix
María Álvarez, seventeen, de-thorns roses at a Colombian flower plantation to help support her family. Pregnant and jobless, she accepts an offer to carry drugs to New York.
- Netflix3.7/5
- IMDb7.4/1037,782 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes97%
Trailer
Plot summary
María Álvarez is seventeen and works at a flower plantation in a small Colombian village, de-thorning roses for low pay. Her wages help keep her family, among them an unemployed sister raising a child alone. After unfair treatment from her supervisor she leaves the job, against her family's wishes, and discovers that she is pregnant. Her boyfriend, Juan, proposes marriage; she turns him down. She travels to Bogotá to look for work, where someone offers her a way to earn money by carrying drugs out of the country. With few other prospects, María agrees, swallows sixty-two wrapped pellets of cocaine, and boards a flight to New York City. Her friend Blanca has been recruited for the same trip.
Cast
- Virgina Arizaas Juana
- Rodrigo Sánchez Borhorquezas Supervisor (as Rodrigo Sanchez Borhorquez)
- Charles Albert Patiñoas Felipe
- Wilson Guerreroas Juan
- Johanna Andrea Moraas Diana Álvarez
- Fabricio Suarezas Pacho
- Mateo Suarezas Pacho
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Maria Full of Grace (2004)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Colombia picked Maria Full of Grace as its official entry for Best International Feature at the 77th Academy Awards, but the film was rejected for not being Colombian enough and El Rey was submitted instead.
- Director Joshua Marston considered about 800 actresses for Maria; with weeks to go before filming, Colombian actress Catalina Sandino Moreno sent in an audition tape and won the part, her first screen credit.
- Filming was planned for Colombia but was blocked by bombings before the 2002 presidential election; after a coup attempt ruled out Venezuela, the film was shot in the Ecuadorian village of Amaguaña.
- Joshua Marston wrote the film after a conversation with a real-life drug mule who carried drugs inside her body, and researched it by interviewing prisoners, Colombian flower plantation workers, U.S. customs inspectors and Colombian immigrants in Queens.
- Producers balked at Marston's plan to shoot the film in Spanish and pushed for big-name actresses such as Penélope Cruz or Jennifer Lopez to play Maria.
- To make the bilingual film, Joshua Marston gave the actors half the script for 24 hours and then took it back so they would not know how it ended.
- For Maria's drug-swallowing scenes, Catalina Sandino Moreno swallowed real pellets that were not latex but made of an easily digestible sugar-like substance.
