Maria full of drugs

February 24, 2005 | Posted by Mia | No comment

Category: 2005

from Evening Standard / by James Mottram

A doctor’s daughter from Bogota is the unlikeliest of this weekend’s Oscar runners

IF THE name is unfamiliar, it soon won’t be. Catalina Sandino Moreno, the first Colombian to be nominated for an Oscar, goes head- to-head with Kate Winslet and Imelda Staunton for the Best Actress prize on Sunday. Her debut role as a drugs mule in Maria Full of Grace, which opens in Britain next month, won her a share of acting honours at the 2004 Berlin Film Festival, tying with Charlize Theron’s serial killer Aileen Wuornos in Monster.

But while the prosthetic-sporting Theron was all about “look-at- me” transformation, 24-year-old Moreno delivers quite the opposite as Maria: a performance of great natural beauty. With olive skin, black marble eyes and dark hair that tumbles over her shoulders, she plays a teenager so desperate to escape her small-town life of poverty that she risks death by ingesting pellets of heroin.

The film, written and directed by first-timer Joshua Marston, follows Maria as she attempts to smuggle a stomach-load of smack into New York.

“In Colombia, it’s an everyday story,” says Moreno, who beat 800 girls to win the role. “There are big posters saying ‘Don’t be a mule.’ So it’s a constant thing. Women never talk about it. Young people don’t care.

They try to hide it but it is everywhere in Colombia.”

The daughter of a Bogota pathologist and a veterinarian, Moreno’s affluent upbringing sets her apart as one of the lucky ones. Having dreamed of acting professionally she made the odd commercial, and theatre was “a constant in my life”, but Moreno was studying for a degree in advertising when she heard that Marston was in town casting a film.

“I read the script. I thought it was a very kind movie, a very human movie.

I don’t know anything about drugs; I didn’t have a background in them. I’d never met anybody that had done this. So for me it was fresh. But I loved the whole human part of the movie. It’s not just about a drug-mule who wants to go to America. It’s about a girl who has some problems and she makes some bad decisions.”

After discussing the role with her mother, Moreno was unsure whether she could play the part. “I didn’t know if I’d be able to get in her skin.

She has to do a lot of things that I’d never imagine doing.” But filming in Ecuador - it was too dangerous to shoot in Colombia - allowed her to live the role. “Oh, I was Maria the whole time,” she enthuses. “Being away from home really helped me. I was not in my usual bed. I was not with my mother. I was alone there.”

She even took to swallowing the fake pellets. “I practised but it was so hard. The day of the shooting the nervousness you see is totally real. I couldn’t do it at first.”

Such moments of authenticity have earned Maria Full of Grace comparisons to films by Ken Loach, who tackled Britain’s drugs problem in Sweet Sixteen.

“I’m very impressed by realist cinema - particularly British realism,” says Marston, an American who spent months immersing himself in Colombian culture.

Like Loach, he scoured schools and factories to find non- professional actors. He gave the cast half the script for 24 hours before taking it back and urging them to improvise.

Loach, for his part, is impressed. “I think it’s a very pleasing film with a lot of sensitivity, tact and warmth,” he has said.

The film avoids Hollywood-style drugs brutality. “One of the things I discovered was that there is this other form of violence, this psychological manipulation,” says Marston, a 35-year-old with a mop of curly, brown hair.

“One example is the paternal quality of the drug dealer, which many people told me about.

He’s very well-dressed, very kind and he gives the mules a lot of money. I have no doubt there are others - but my biggest problem with Hollywood is that it tends to repeat itself in using stereotypes.”

I ask what he thought of Steven Soderbergh’s Oscar-winning Traffic.

Pointing at my tape recorder, he says: “You’ll have to turn that off for me to answer that question.”

After the film wrapped, Moreno decided to stay in New York to continue her studies. She admits that, like Maria, it was her dream from high school to move to America.

Since 2002, she has been living with David Elwell, a crew member from the film.

Moreno has yet to settle on a followup. For the moment, she’s soaking up the attention and preparing to enjoy her night with the stars.

“The only thing I know is that I’m going to have fun,” she says. “I’m going to be with my family. I talked to my grandmother and she said, ‘I’m going to go to LA, to see you at the Oscars.’ That’s perfect. I want all of my family to come.”