‘Hiedra’ Venice Review: A lyrical portrait of mothers, sons, and missing ties

A film of sensations, tactile stimuli, and constant movement, HIEDRA operates in a space beyond social portraiture, opting instead for a more personal, intuitive, and emotional approach to its story and characters. At its core, it’s a tale of mothers and children, of encounters and missed connections, of repressed emotions and shared needs. One could say it’s the story of a mother searching for a son, and a son searching for a mother. And of a crossing that allows both to find, in a sideways and perhaps unexpected way, what they’ve been dreaming of.

Azucena (Simone Bucio) is around 30, and as a doctor’s remark makes clear, she had a child when she was still a teenager. She lives with her grandfather, whom she cares for, and carries herself with a mix of detachment and childlike behavior, as if inhabiting the body of an adult without quite being one. She doesn’t speak much, and one of her main activities is going to an orphanage to watch the children play. It’s obvious her trauma—her child is nowhere to be seen, and one assumes her family sent him off for adoption—drives this strange habit, but her true purpose remains unclear.

Julio (Francis Eddú Llumiquinga) is one of the teenagers at that orphanage. Affable and good-natured, he tends to the babies there with a tenderness that feels almost maternal. Along with his friends—boys his age who are close to leaving the institution without ever having been adopted—he goes out, has fun, and tries to make the most of things. Azucena watches them until one day she approaches them in a park, literally asking to join their games. It’s an awkward moment, but she eventually becomes part of the group. With a car and a house, she quickly turns into a kind of older sister for the “gang”: she feeds them, cuts their hair, and spends time with them.

From that connection, HIEDRA gradually narrows its focus to the relationship between Azucena and Julio. He notices her constant gaze and assumes it means something else, until her story and intentions come more fully to light. What follows is strange, confusing, but also a chance for both to bring their fears and emotions to the surface with a newfound honesty. A story of a possible mother and a possible son—though they don’t resemble each other physically or racially—the new film by the Ecuadorian director of ALBA and LA PIEL PULPO leans toward poetry over realism, exploring how both characters confront their traumas, their longing, and their fragile hopes of rebuilding a bond that was lost. Whether or not they are who they believe the other to be.

Barragán’s restless camera lingers on the characters in close-up, placing them in physical activity—playing games in a house, visiting a bowling alley, swimming in a river, wandering through fields and parks—and letting the images themselves capture their ties, their closeness and distance, the connections that spark and fade. This lyrical approach leads to a late sequence—likely to be much discussed—in which the film veers into fantasy to depict details of that tentative relationship. It’s arguably an unnecessary and even heavy-handed moment, but one that makes more sense when viewed as part of the strange poetry at the heart of the film.

HIEDRA inhabits a liminal space between the real and the fantastic, between psychological realism and the uncanny. Azucena meets someone who may or may not be her son, and chooses to see him as such. Julio meets someone who may or may not be his mother, and realizes that might be exactly what he needs. Both yearn for something primal that they’ve lost—or perhaps never known—and sense that the other could help them reclaim it. The film dwells in that fragile in-between: the tenuous bond that ties together what should never have been torn apart.