Gripping acting that steers clear of the artificial helps give realistic edge to Los hongos
Points: 8
“To most people, the film title Los hongos (The Mushrooms) evokes a psychedelic imagery, filled with drugs and pleasure. But instead it’s a metaphor that literally refers to mushrooms: living beings that appear in extremely rotting contexts and decay. The mushrooms are the life that is born amidst death,” says filmmaker Oscar Ruiz Navia (El vuelco del cangrejo) about his second opus, a sensitive urban tale about youngsters for whom graffiti culture is both a means of expression and a place of belonging.
In spite of the harsh environment they live in, these kids in their teens and 20s manage to grow as mushrooms do.
Set in Cali, Colombia, Los hongos concerns Ras (Jovan Alexis Marquinez Angulo), a working-class black teen, and Calvin (Calvin Buenaventura Tascon), a middle-class fine arts student, who are two close friends who not only share a passion for graffiti culture but also a good dose of heartache.
Ras has a prosaic and underpaid day job as a construction worker with less than friendly workmates, lives in near poverty with his mother and his only escape is painting graffiti at nights around Cali.
As for Calvin, he’s having a hard time coping with his parents’ divorce, he may break up with his girlfriend and his grandmother has cancer. Nonetheless, they are both life-affirming, socially-aware fellows who dare struggle for their social and political ideals regardless of their often grim scenario.
If the storyline sounds like the stuff depressing, downbeat drama is made of, fear no more. Los hongos is nothing like that. To begin with, it examines the daily routine of these two friends in a documentary-like style that strongly evokes realism. At the same time, it has a more impressionistic, poetic edge that takes the whole scenario to a different level.
Such combination is hard to pull off, but for the most part Ruiz Navia manages to mix them seamlessly, in quite an organic manner. So you get to see spontaneous, enticing slices of life that make up minimal stories.
But Los hongos is no fairy tale either. I’d say its tone lies somewhere between harsh realism and moderate optimism, depending on the sides of the story. Among other things, it’s the gripping performances, never picturesque or artificial, that make the film so dramatically assured. Likewise, the special, intimate moments captured by an alluring cinematography have an emotional resonance that goes beyond words and into the realm of the senses. Which doesn’t necessarily mean that you have a profound, existential work here. At times, Los hongos feels as if it just scratches the surface of its many possible topics. But I find that to be a minor drawback, if that, considering how many other things are well done.
Production notes:
Los hongos (Colombia/ Argentina/ France/ Germany, 2014) . Directed by Oscar Ruiz Navia. Written by Oscar Ruiz Navia, César Augusto Acevedo. With: Jovan Alexis Marquinez Angulo, Calvin Buenaventura Tascon, Gustavo Ruiz Montoya, Atala Estrada, Maria Elvira Solis, Dominique Tonnelier. Cinematography: Sofia Oggioni Hatty. Editing: Felipe Guerrero. Running time: 103 minutes.
