Hiedra, the first Ecuadorian film in competition at Venice in the Orizzonti section, weaves mother and son through gestures, glances, and bodies suspended between desire and intimacy. Director Ana Cristina Barragán shapes a cinema of symbols and roots, where nature and the body converse between innocence and obsession.
Ivy (Hiedra) in esoteric symbolism has a double meaning: innocence and rebirth, but also obsessive attachment. Why did you choose this title?
I am drawn to ivy as an invasive plant that grows without being wanted, toxic and yet beautiful. It regenerates itself, and its roots cling obsessively, attaching in order to survive – just like the characters. Ivy makes me think of a cloudy Quito, of abandoned spaces, of walls and ravines. It is a plant that endures the shade.
In all your films the face, and particularly the eyes, play an important role. Often it is the director of photography who gives special meaning to the face and eyes. Let’s think of the opening scene of Ivy. What were the key decisions made during the shooting?
We worked very closely with Adrián on the film’s visual language. At first, we tested anamorphic lenses; I greatly admire his sensitivity as a cinematographer, especially in his work with these lenses in Manto de gemas by Natalia López and Nuestro tiempo by Carlos Reygadas. But along the way, we realized they didn’t quite match the intimacy we were seeking in Hiedra. We wanted the narrative to be carried by the body, the eyes – that sense of being almost hypnotized by what happens inside the characters – very close to their hands, faces, and fluids, with high levels of improvisation on set. We then chose old spherical lenses. We thought a lot about the staging, about the type of camera movement for Azucena and for the teenagers, and about the work with off-screen space. The opening scene in particular was shot with diopters and shallow depth of field, allowing the characters’ faces to drift in and out of focus as they play at being dogs. The greatest challenge of that scene lay in the acting: channeling the game of rage and animality present in them, which required significant physical and mental care behind it all.
At just thirteen, Azucena is forced to leave her newborn son in an orphanage following an unwanted pregnancy. Eighteen years later, when they meet again, Julio is now a teenager. Their bodies resemble each other, and it is precisely on these bodies and their instinctive connec...
José de la Cuadra argued that “the mission of literature and of the arts in general is to make evident the rottenness of the social regime.” Is this a statement that can still be shared today? Is Hiedra a film of denunciation?
Yes, it is a film of denunciation, though from the shore of intimacy, of the body, of what is neither seen nor made explicit. Perhaps burdening art with a specific mission is limiting. But in the case of Hiedra we have no agendas. It’s created from a place that is perhaps more essential, I needed to speak about abandonment, about what is broken in childhood, about a body impacted by abuse and the trace that abuse leaves throughout life. I was searching for that encounter between two characters who, despite their differences in privilege, have both lived on the margins – of care, of the parameters of normality, and of the path toward success.
In your films animals are always present as gentle, companion creatures, from the little rabbits in Hiedra to the ladybird in Alba (2016). Are they like building blocks, harmless pastimes, or do they carry a deeper meaning?
I don’t feel they are harmless pastimes, but rather observers of the human condition from an essential, primal place that belongs to another sphere. They are observers who might not fully understand what is happening, yet I sense they grasp it from a higher perspective. In La piel pulpo, my previous film, the universe of mollusks and microscopic sea creatures accompanies the entire story and the relationship of the twin siblings at its center. What is particular there is that in that film the initial idea arose while I was taking analog photographs for a conservation project on mollusks inhabiting the tide pools of a beach where I grew up as a child; it was from them that the whole concept of twinning and siblinghood in La piel pulpo began. Hiedra was previously titled Angora Rabbit: back then (2017), the story was about a 30-year-old woman fascinated by her neighbors’ angora rabbit and how this relationship disrupted her life. I am interested in animality in all its forms, even within human characters. Animals have marked my life since childhood, and if I hadn’t studied cinema, I would have become a biologist or worked in animal defense.
Throughout the whole film the viewer remains on an uncertain borderline between maternal feeling and a desire for incest. But as a director you always stopped just a moment before crossing that line. Was the screenplay always as we see it in the film, or were there other temptations? Is it a coincidence that the protagonist is called Azucena, meaning lily, the flower of purity?
I feel an urgency to break away from the confines of intimacy as we usually define it as “normal.” There is such depth in human bonds, so much more ambiguity, contradiction, and need. In Hiedra I seek something unordered in desire, something unresolved, even Oedipal. I explore tenderness toward the Other without fear: toward a baby, a grandfather, a mother, a son, a sister. And yes, in the script things sometimes leaned more in one direction than another, but always in search of what resists categorization, what carries many meanings and layers. Azucena: it was a name that came to me in a state of vigil, between sleep and wakefulness. Later, I realized that it held a powerful meaning in relation to the film. In Greek mythology, the white lily was consecrated to Hera, the goddess of motherhood. One night, while she slept, Hercules – the son of Zeus and the mortal Alcmena – was placed upon Hera’s breast without her knowing it. They wanted the child to drink her milk and thus attain immortality. Hercules suckled with such force that Hera awoke startled and pushed him away: the divine milk spilled across the sky, giving birth to the Milky Way, and upon the earth, where the first white lilies blossomed: the azucenas.
