In the film Trust, Maria undergoes a period of what most people would call an “existential crisis” after the death of her father. I would argue that her father’s death was not the true catalyst in her spiral towards self-reflection, though. I believe that meeting the woman at the gas station and her involvement with the stolen baby was what sent Maria off, almost forcefully starting her on her journey of finding her authentic self.
Once Maria and this woman had shared parts of their personal lives with each other, Maria felt she had some sort of unspoken connection with the lonely woman and with the experiences she shared with her. What really drew Maria to the woman was the stolen baby. It was as if Maria and the woman shared this part of each of their devastating stories with each other. Maria, at the time, was pregnant, and the woman was desperate for a baby to bring joy back into her life.
The disappearance of this baby, I believe, symbolized in a way the disappearance of the “old” Maria. The transition from the naive, youthful version to the dependent, serious one. Not that Maria was “innocent” before, but that sense of not knowing the ways the world could hurt you vanished from her identity after the baby vanished with this mystery woman.
Towards the end of the film, when Maria tracks down the woman’s husband and eventually shows up at their doorstep to see the woman, she finds that the woman had left the baby in a telephone booth. The entire lead-up to this moment, to finding the mystery woman and uncovering what had become of the baby, all seemed at the time, pointless. Especially because of the more serious events going on in Maria’s life, the whereabouts of a baby were not nearly as important as everything else happening around her. Except, Maria couldn’t seem to let it go. She was drawn to the woman and the missing baby despite the obvious fact that she had no goal or no idea what she was actually looking for or trying to accomplish.
The baby in the telephone booth was unharmed and found by the police. Maria faces a similar fate, being in the hands of what the public thought was a threat, aka Matthew and his grenade, but being scooped up by the police unharmed. In this parallel, the mystery woman and Matthew were both made out to be the monsters in their separate situations. But, in both cases, Maria knew that they were far from this, and she understood why they did what they did. Through this experience of truly seeing both of these people, for their heart and soul and not for their outward actions, Maria was transformed. She shed her selfish skin and became a selfless being who yearned to understand others, even when they resisted her. Untouched by a single lick of harm, Maria went through the most painful experience of truly understanding another human being.
