By STEVE PERSALL and PHILIP BOOTH
Published August 19, 2004
[HBO Films/Fine Line Features]
In Maria Full of Grace, Maria (Catalina Sandino Moreno), a poverty-stricken Colombian woman, is driven into the dangerous occupation of drug mule.
Maria Full of Grace (R) (101 min.) - The late film critic Gene Siskel often complained that too few movies take time to explore the central characters' jobs. He believed that understanding the occupation a person chooses, and how well or poorly he does it, is vital to understanding that person. On that standard, Siskel would have greatly admired Joshua Marston's film, Maria Full of Grace.
Maria (Catalina Sandino Moreno) is 17, a citizen of Colombia, supporting her family by bundling roses for export. Her work would be considered a sweat shop tragedy except that it's so common in her society. Each day she has quotas that won't be met if she rests at all. A heartless boss looks over her shoulder, urging her beyond personal problems that might distract her. The pay is meager compared to the pain.
Knowing Maria's situation, it's easy to understand why she's drawn into a new, dangerous occupation as a drug mule, carrying heroin into the United States by swallowing dozens of drug-packed pellets. Getting past airport customs officials is scary, but not nearly as frightening as what could happen if just one of those pellets ruptures inside her body.
Maria Full of Grace is a laudable debut for Marston, who was born in California and educated at universities in Chicago and New York. Yet his awareness of the subject, sharpened by years of research and translated by others into Spanish, is startling. It's as if the film were made by a Latin American filmmaker, so completely informed and fashioned is it.
Even when the drama shifts to New York, where Maria and several equally desperate women are delivering drugs, the film sees everything through a foreigner's eyes. We glimpse signs for Colombian restaurants and stores and feel a twinge of comfort in strange surroundings. The language barrier frustrates until a local Little Colombia neighborhood fixer (Orlando Tobon, essentially playing himself) offers assistance. Yet we see how the nationals involved in drug dealing are willing to feed on their own.
At the center of this tableau is Moreno, a newcomer discovered through auditions. Despite her inexperience, this is one of the better performances of 2004, with its steadily measured arc of character. Maria is initially naive, then steeled by determination to live her own life, then fearful of what may happen if she does. But she's always driven by tragic necessity, a potent hero who we're never certain will come out ahead.
Marston's chief strength, however, is his attention to details that American audiences - and filmmakers, for that matter - rarely care about. He takes time - too much on occasion - to describe the smuggling technique visually. The third act is a bit overloaded with new characters, crises and resolutions, but we're so hooked on Maria's problems that we don't mind much.
Maria Full of Grace is a solid debut for Marston and Moreno, each honored at film festivals from Sundance to Berlin. Moreno, in fact, tied for best actress honors in Berlin with Charlize Theron's Oscar-winning turn in Monster. That's a mild overstatement by the judges, but it confirms that Moreno's performance should be remembered during the awards season. A-
- STEVE PERSALL, Times film critic
Catching the big one
Riding Giants (PG-13) (102 min.) Has anybody in the past half-century or so embodied counterculture cool more than the SoCal surfing fanatics who bummed around on Oahu's North Shore during the late 1950s?
The clan of confirmed beach bums spent eight or more hours a day catching tasty waves on Waimea Bay, surviving on speared fish, pilfered pineapples and captured chickens, playing pranks and living in thatched huts.
That moment in surfing history represents one of the more charming episodes of Riding Giants, an often fascinating, stunningly photographed documentary about the lives, and, on occasion, deaths, of those whose mission it was to ride massive walls of water.
Stacy Peralta, a professional skateboarder responsible for the 2001 documentary Dogtown and Z-Boys, brings the same energy and compelling storytelling to Riding Giants. He zips through a history of surfing - beginning with its roots in Polynesian culture - before focusing on developments in the past 60 years.
It's difficult not to get caught up in the enthusiasm for surfing demonstrated by Waimea Bay hero Greg Noll, the fiercely competitive athlete and natural showman whose reminiscences dominate the movie. The same might be said about Laird Hamilton, the dashing blond fellow who has reinvented the art of big-wave riding in recent years: He relies on the aid of tow ropes, propelled by water scooters, to conquer waves that appear as massive as skyscrapers.
Not that I'm a purist, but isn't that cheating? B+
- PHILIP BOOTH, Times correspondent
A sensitive samurai
Twilight Samurai (NR) (29 min.) Seibei Iguchi (Hiroyuki Sanada), the protagonist of Twilight Samurai, isn't your average sword-swinging warrior. Struggling to care for his two young daughters and a mentally unbalanced mother, he works long hours at a warehouse. After hours, he makes baskets to pay the debt he incurred when his wife became ill and died. He dresses in torn garments and doesn't much bother with personal hygiene.
Twilight Samurai, in some respects, is a corrective to the artificial exoticism of that Tom Cruise event movie. And it's told from the inside, not outside, of a subculture in 19th century Japan. Seibei is a skilled but reluctant fighter, a quiet fellow who takes care of his own family, rather than submitting to the will of his clan's elders or following the social expectations of his mocking co-workers.
He stumbles onto a cause worth fighting for when he meets an old flame, Tomoe (Rie Miyazawa), who is fleeing from a cruel ex-husband.
Filmmaker Yoji Yamada offers a delicate balance between deep characterization and occasional flashes of samurai fighting during the twilight of the era. A-
P.B.
[Last modified August 18, 2004, 10:24:09]
[Sony Pictures Classics]
Surfer Laird Hamilton is dwarfed by a traveling wall of water in Riding Giants, a film that chronicles those who go down to the sea on surfboards.
