“Bucio’s charisma combined with her character’s relative innocence at the age of 31 makes her a magnetic screen presence.”

At 31, Azucena (Mexican actress Simone Bucio) has never truly come out of her childhood. Having given birth to a son at age 13, the result of a horrific incident that cut short a promising gymnastics career, she is a young woman frozen in time. She decides to seek out her son, who she finds in a foster home. Julio (newcomer Francis Eddú Llumiquinga) is one of a group of older kids, the ones that never got picked for adoption. It’s a tight group, but Azucena manages to work her way in, her car and the money from her sales job providing the gateway. After gaining the trust of the group and of Julio, once she and her son have some one-on-one time she tells him the truth. Initially he rejects the idea, but blood is thicker than water, and tentatively they feel their way through the beginnings of a mother-son relationship.

The final film in a trilogy, after 2016 debut Alba and 2022’s La Piel Pulpo, Ecuadorian director Ana Cristina Barragán’s Hiedra (The Ivy, possibly referring to the clingy nature of Azucena with regards to her son) is a film that once again centers on characters with strong family ties and examines how far these can be pushed. Before Azucena’s secret is out, Julio is clearly attracted to this older, mature woman, but when he clumsily makes his move she rejects him. In the film’s final scene, however, the two cross a border while they are holed up in a mountain refuge to escape the ashes of an erupting volcano. While the moment is not truly sexual in nature, it is a moment the film has been dancing around for a while, and one that will be the focal point of discussion on this otherwise forgettable film.

Because of its strong camera work, which places the viewer close to the characters in a way that is not necessarily sensual but gives Hiedra a certain kind of sultriness, the film has an almost uncomfortable intimacy at times. Bucio’s charisma, somewhat reminiscent of French actress Charlotte Gainsbourg’s, combined with her character’s relative innocence at the age of 31, makes her a magnetic screen presence, something that was already apparent in her previous performance in Ann Oren’s Piaffe. There is an equilibrium between strength and fragility in her performance that makes her character far more interesting than Julio. The screentime being more or less equally divided between the two, with ample time devoted to Julio’s endeavours with his friends from the home, makes interest levels fluctuate, although the film’s premise necessitates this approach. Llumiquinga does an admirable job in his debut, but his character simply isn’t that compelling.

Of course it’s the relationship between the two leads that should be central, but this can only truly develop once their familial connection is known to both sides, and this moment comes too late into the film. This makes Azucena and Julio’s final scenes cathartic, and it succeeds as such, but we do not see much of the path to that catharsis. In short, the film is unbalanced.

What stands out is how tactile Hiedra is, and how well it works as a visceral experience, at least insofar as a social realist drama allows. This keeps the film afloat for the most part, together with Bucio’s performance, and when the frame opens up to the wide spaces of Ecuador’s mountain regions the film soars to a great crescendo. Unfortunately, too much time is wasted in the first hour to allow Hiedra to rise above a mid-level arthouse drama with nice performances and good camera work.