Alias María

Although one would think a film about a 13-year-old pregnant Colombian guerrilla fighter would be shock value enough, the protagonist of Alias María is also deputized to deliver her commander's baby to safety while fighting to save her own skin. Although director José Luis Rugeles's film is a tough and unflinching immersive experience into a merciless world, he is not insensitive to unsettling gender relations within this claustrophobic environment. The adolescent soldier, Maria, is played with believable grim-faced realism by Karen Torres, although like most of the other amateur actors in prominent roles here, she doesn't move much beyond this single dimension, performance-wise. The film also tends to dwell too much on surface detail, with the psychological effects of their daily traumas receiving short shrift throughout much of the movie. But the tension here is ratcheted up to a nail-biting degree, and Maria's unusually brutal dilemma—essentially being a pregnant caregiver/soldier—is enough to hold viewer interest to the harrowing conclusion. Interestingly, the real menace here isn't human at all, but rather the Colombian jungle: an all-enveloping pale-green hell on earth seemingly fighting its own war of attrition against the uncaring humans who use it as a battlefield. Recommended. (M. Sandlin)