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Maria (Catalina Sandino Moreno), a smart but impetuous girl, hates her job at a flower processing plant. Unhappy with her family situation (she must give her meager earnings over to support her unmarried sister's child) and with her boyfriend, she then learns she is pregnant. Unwilling to marry him, Maria chances upon a stranger in town who takes her to Bogotá and immediately, albeit suspiciously, finds her a job as a drug mule. She will transport pellets of drugs in her stomach to the United States for a sum of money that could quickly solve her family's financial crisis. The first half of the film is almost a documentary: Marston spares no details in showing what Maria must undergo. The film is powerful on many different levels because Marston doesn't force feed the obvious and the subtle is treated with painstaking care. We watch her prepare first by swallowing grapes whole and gagging—it's awful. But when she swallows over 50 pellets that could easily kill her, my heart leapt to my throat. Apart from the religious connotation of taking communion, there's a creepy sexual connotation as well, one of domination and prostitution. Men are in charge of this operation, finding young attractive girls who won't be missed should they disappear. Every step Maria takes from that point has the audience gripped in fear. We want her to survive the flight, get past customs, get her money and not die or be killed in the process. The empathy we feel for her character comes totally naturally and is also very unsettling: her decision isn't the best one, but then what other options does she truly have? She's the literal link between the cartel and the consumer—and since in this country we tend to focus on eradicating the supply but not the demand that produces it, she's one of them. Apart from one of the ways narcotics arrive in this country, we find out about other little tricks. The runners put several girls on the plane, so if one is caught there is more likelihood that the others will pass through customs. The flight itself is harrowing. In one scene, Maria must go to the bathroom as she has started to expel pellets. There she cleans them off and swallows them again. Any feeling of humiliation or disgust is quickly ruled over by fear; she has to do it. Once in New York the girls are holed up in a hotel and forced to expel and clean the pellets. One of them, Blanca, who was sick during the flight, dies under mysterious circumstances. Maria finds a blood-filled bathroom and it's unclear whether or not Blanca was killed rather than being taken to the hospital or if a pellet exploded in her stomach and they opened her up to take out the rest. In any case, Maria and her friend flee, taking the drugs with them. At this point that the film becomes more melodramatic and less like a documentary. A succession of events feel slightly forced though obviously Maria's options are quickly narrowing down. Though defiant, frightened and immature, she still tries to do the right thing, to salvage something. When the immigrant experience for many now means risking everything to come to the U.S. as either a drug mule, in a container crammed with other people and no oxygen, or as victim of sex trafficking, there is an awful realization that there are no laws to protect this invisible population from barbarity. And many more stories could be told about the drugs readily consumed in this country, giving no thought to the poverty, humiliation, and death linked to that quick high. Nor is it just the drug cartel. There's the diamond cartel and the Walmart cartel, the mad rush for anything cheap at another's expense and dignity. Even fresh flowers. Marston shows the conditions under which the women at the flower factory must work. When Maria walks by a flower stand in NYC and sees the fruits of her labor, so to speak, there's a parallel of degradation, though obviously her life was not in danger in the factory. Maria's final decision is not an easy one to make. But just as in the beginning of the film, we root for her just the same. She's one of us.
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