Netflixable? Horny Teens in Spain glimpsed “Through My Window”

If you want to know what the kids have been watching this weekend, they’ve been reading subtitles, brushing up on their Spanish and…biology.

“Through My Window (A través de mi ventana)” is a Spanish teens-on-the-make drama/not-rom-com built on a “Pretty in Pink” framework. It’s based on a — Book? Story? — by Wattpad fiction writer Ariana Godoy that plays around with that “in love with a rich guy while poor and maybe perfect-for-her ‘Duckie’ pines away” formula that pre-dates John Hughes by hundreds of years.

Godoy and the film’s variations on that formula? Our lovers aren’t star-crossed. They’re thrown together by a bit of wifi theft. And they’re not chaste, pining away for each other, teasing towards expressions of true love no matter what his family says. Oh no. They’re connecting carnally pretty much from the start.

Three word review? “Vapid but titillating.”

Raquel, played by screen newcomer Clare Galle, is a high schooler growing up without a dad. Like him, she sees herself as a writer. Like him, she’s unpublished and likely to remain that way, seeing as how she takes a writer’s workshop and refuses to ever share her work for evaluation by her teacher or peers.

“Through My Window” is her narrated story of her life and the torrid romance that takes it over.

Her house is “surrounded” by the mansion with courtyards owned by the too-aptly-named Hidalgo family. There are three hunky sons in that clan — Artemis, Ares and Apollo (LOL) — and the middle one is the one Raquel kind of/sort of stalks — online, and peeping in on his exercise sessions, his post-shower strutting around nude and the parade of young women who share his bed.

God of War Ares steals her wifi password — for some reason, the rich can’t get wifi that works — and dares Raquel to do something about it. He (Julio Peña) is arrogant, aloof. He knows she’s INTO him, and he feigns disinterest in the beautiful virgin next door. She can’t “report” him to anybody.

“I guess it’s not common for stalkers to report the people they’re stalking,” he purrs (in Spanish with subtitles, or dubbed). “Sleep tight, Witch.

Yeah, he gives her a nickname. And yes, that makes him irresistible. Along with his six-pack, soccer skills, darkly handsome looks and his dismissal.

It takes no time at all for them to plunge into heavy petting and panty-shedding. None at all.

Eduard Sola’s script, based on Godoy’s story, lacks anything in the way of subtlety and a tendency to rush towards the um, climax– several climaxes.

Raquel is crushed on by her “best friend and future husband” Yoshi, who wears pink in his blond hair and is about as masculine as Jon Cryer was in “Pretty in Pink.” Yoshi (Guillermo Lasheras) is a bit of an exhibitionist, a bit dull as most doormat-characters are, and that’s all we know about him.

For that matter, every single character is so superficial and all-surface that perhaps Ms. Godoy’s fiction is published in tweets. Just guessing, mind you.

There’s Barcelona scenery and sex, posh parties and sex, and obvious foreshadowing and melodrama at every turn. Subtle? Not in the least.

As teens are the ones watching this, let’s make this a teachable moment, shall we? What’s our anti-hero allergic to, kids? It’s IMPOSSIBLE to miss, as are the few other germane plot points, underlined and highlighted so that we don’t miss them.

Still, third-string director Marçal Forés is not new to salacious sexual content (“Everlasting Love”) and shoots a few good sex scenes with our very attractive leads, and clumsily squeezes those in between shots of scenic Barcelona’s mountaintop theme park, Tibidabo.

And that’s what the kids are here for, right? The sex, not the theme park.

Rating: TV-MA, fairly explicit sex, profanity and drinking — all involving high school teens

Cast: Clara Galle, Julio Peña, Guillermo Lasheras, Pilar Castro and
Natalia Azahara.

Credits: Directed by Marçal Forés, scripted by Eduard Sola, based on a novel by
Ariana Godoy. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:53

About Roger Moore

Movie Critic, formerly with McClatchy-Tribune News Service, Orlando Sentinel, published in Spin Magazine, The World and now published here, Orlando Magazine, Autoweek Magazine
This entry was posted in Reviews, previews, profiles and movie news. Bookmark the permalink.

3 Responses to Netflixable? Horny Teens in Spain glimpsed “Through My Window”

  1. I’ve read the book and waited almost a year for the movie and here are my thoughts. The movie is nothing like the book, i suggest you to read the book and see by your self that they didn’t follow anything like is in the original story. And yes, is an adaptation but it’s a really bad adaptation. There wasn’t character development, and if don’t had read the book you will not gonna understand a lot of things.

    • Roger Moore says:

      Well, if I check that out of my local library, I figure I’ll be put on a watch list. But thanks for your input. The author may not bear most of the blame here.

    • Shelly Titan says:

      That’s what I thought too. They changed way too many things from the book to the movie. I had read the book and loved it and couldn’t wait for the movie to come out but I was disappointed. Ares wasn’t edgy and dangerous like he was in the book. I like the guy they cast for him though. But I thought the best friend character was completely different than the guy they cast. He almost seemed gay so his crush on her wasn’t believable. The storyline seemed rushed and the tension and build up from the book wasn’t there because it was too rushed.

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