1. Maria Full of Grace
The movie is set in some place in Colombia and revolves around an intelligent and
attractive woman, Maria. Maria is a typical girl who’s family pressures and dead end job
have taken a toll on her life. With a sister who has a baby to support and a mother who is
ill, Maria is expected to work at a dead end job to support her family. After Maria gets
pregnant with a temporary boyfriend she quits from her job. Maria ends up being a drug
mule and going to New York to make money to support her family. Things do not end
up well and Maria runs away to live a life in New York.
I think the desperation and apathy of a large number of Colombian women of
meager means are very well portrayed in the film. Maria along with other women at the
rose assembly line are being forced to work standing up without much consideration.
They are in a sense machine to the employers. Maria knows it is a job which is not going
to get her anywhere but can’t see any other options. At home, she is expected to help her
whole family since her sister has a baby to take care of. It is a life with very few if any
moments of happiness. The constant bickering about money, feelings of loyalty to family
and feeling powerless to change the future are the undertones of the movie.
Maria does not want to get into the drug trafficking business but doesn’t see any
other options to support her family. The money would be good and would take care of
the problems at least temporarily. Maria befriends another girl who has been a drug mule
a couple of times and she serves as a mentor. The two girls form an affectionate bond
and sisterhood. Her friend tells Maria about her sister who lives in New York and how
she badly wanted to see her but couldn’t since her sister would ‘kill’ her if she found out

2. what she was doing. Again, the dynamics of family as being the one and only thing in
their lives is shown in the movie.
Maria hesitates agreeing to being a drug mule in a scene but agrees for the most
part when the drug boss gives her some money saying there ‘are no obligations’. It is a
society in which more weight is given to demeanor and body language when
communications as opposed to plain speaking. It seems the people are tied down largely
by customs and being part of a family even though the old structures have broken down.
For example, Maria’s house does not have any male figure in it. The two sisters share the
responsibility. The men in Maria’s life are shown as chauvinists who are concerned with
only abusing women. Yet Maria is expected to serve her family. In the old days, the
men would go out to hunt and the women would stay at home to tend to the yound and
the old. Due to globalization, those family structures have been destroyed and yet people
still try to cling on to the customs and traditions of the old. In America, the children are
not expected to look after the parents once they get older. Yet in Columbia, that is not
the case.
Maria Full of Grace, in a sense captures the problems facing women all over the
developing world. The social support structures such as extended families, tribes have all
gone away leaving behind an every man for himself mentality. The society is interested
in exploiting them all the way from boyfriends to bosses. Even the drug traffickers are
interested in how much drugs each girl can carry. As if they are animals. Maria at the
end realizes that she needs to break free from the life of servitude to the customs when
she does not board the plane back to Colombia. She knows she will probably never see
her family again but realizes that if she does not make this decision now she will be

3. unhappy and regretful for the rest of her life. However, America gives her a chance to
make a new start and to escape the life of mediocrity at best and servitude at worst.