Maria's Not So Existential Crisis

In the movie, Trust, Maria's transition from childhood to adulthood could be interpreted as an existential crisis, however, she is still very much held hostage by the system that existentialism strives to escape. While Maria does change her clothes and stops wearing the tight neon style of the time, the young clothes no longer match her personality as she experiences more hardships, such as being ostracized by her mother.

Maria repeatedly takes her future into her own hands. After finding out she is pregnant, she considers abortion. She does not simply accept the baby as inevitable. She contemplates how a child will effect the rest of her life and assesses if that is something she wants at the time. After deciding that she does not want a baby, she makes the decision independently to get an abortion and she follows through.

Unlike Meursault in The Stranger, who blindly accepts Marie's proposal regardless of his feelings, Maria takes time to think about marrying Matthew. She asks him questions like "Why would you want to get married?" In the end she recognizes her feelings and decides that she doesn't want to get married, and she calls it off.

Even though she decides not to marry Matthew, it is evident that she does in fact care about him. She has not given up on all her human relationships, as it seems Meursault has. She cares about Matthew's well-being, which is made clear when she stands up to Matthew's father for him and continuously tells Matthew to leave his father because he is abusive. She also still values human connections such as trust, which she tests using a trust fall with Matthew. Maria also cares about her mother despite the horrible things her mother has done to her. She does what her mother asks since she believes her mother is still grieving her father's death, and she first insists on staying at home to take care of her mother instead of running off with Matthew.

Maria, in fact, possesses an increasing amount of agency and responsibility throughout her transition to adulthood, which culminates in one of the final scenes with Matthew in the factory. She literally and metaphorically takes her life into her own hands when she takes a live grenade out of Matthew's hands. She takes the grenade with confidence and throws it, showing control of the situation. Maria shows increasing agency throughout the film, and as she watches Matthew get taken away, I have confidence that she will be the one who has a promising future.