"Ganja Queen"

Documentary (Indonesia)

An HBO presentation of an Ikandy Films production. Produced by Janine Hosking, Robin Eastwood. Executive producer (for HBO), Sheila Nevins. Directed, written by Janine Hosking.

Guaranteed to torpedo Balinese tourism and send shivers up the spines of air travelers everywhere, "Ganja Queen" tells the harrowing story of Australian vacationer Schapelle Corby, who in 2004 was discovered with 10 pounds of pot in her luggage after she touched down in Indonesia -- where drug smuggling is punishable by death. Did she do it? Or was she the victim of ganja-running baggage handlers? Given the questions and tensions created by helmer Janine Hosking and the general anxieties about air travel, "Ganja Queen" should have a healthy life on cable, pot-tolerant college campuses and perhaps even in limited arthouse release.

Hosking maintains a sense of critical immediacy, cross-cutting electrically between televised news reports and interviews with Corby's friends and family -- almost all of whom prove to be liabilities, at least in terms of the case.

Indonesian authorities maintain that the genius of Corby's smuggling operation was in its apparent idiocy -- an enormous amount of marijuana, unhidden, and packed in transparent plastic. What could that mean, except that the defendant was cunning enough to have known that, if found out, the plan would look too inept to be real?

It's certainly a prosecutorial stretch, because what Hosking gives us is a group of Australians incapable of finding their way to the beach, much less being capable of running drugs.

Still, there's always a lingering doubt Corby's innocence. Is she really the world best actress and -- as the partisan Balinese press dubs her -- the "Ganja Queen"?

Corby is a likable presence, pretty, simple and bewildered by her life-or-death situation. Her family and friends are a collection of car wrecks whose personal histories are used to malign Corby back in Bali.

Her biggest champion, a hustling Australian business man named Ron Bakir, almost single-handedly destroys Corby's chances for freedom by slandering the entire Balinese court system. What "Ganja Queen" illustrates, obliquely, is the magnet that a celebrated court case can become for the attention-seeking eccentrics of the world.

Despite the suspense Hosking maintains, "Ganja Queen" does seem a bit prolonged, although one never really sees where the Corby story is going or where it will end up. And it's certainly a cautionary tale: You likely won't be reading about Schapelle Corby in Travel & Leisure anytime soon, but her tale should be required viewing for anyone looking for a vacation spot this year.
Camera (color, DV), Ian Pugsley; editors, Hosking, Stephen Hopes; music, Matt Walker. Reviewed on DVD, Los Angeles, Jan. 17, 2007. (In Slamdance Film Festival.) Running time: 121 MIN.