Through My Window: Across the Sea (now on Netflix) is the second movie in the Through My Window trilogy of young adult movies in the strictest definition of the descriptor, since it’s about people who are about as young as adults legally get, and act very much like adults in the sense that they’re pretty much constantly schtupping each other. Considering the depth of storytelling occurring in the first two, one can’t help but assume the third will be titled Through My Window: Across the Sea: Into the Crevasse. I’m obligated to report that these Spanish films are based on a series of novels by Ariana Godoy, who might not have a market for her sexy romance stories if the Twilights and Fifty Shadeses of the world didn’t exist; also, the same creative team, from cast to director to screenwriter, have returned for the second film. Which is a way of saying, may your god(s) help you if you actually sit down and try to watch these wretched things.
The Gist: RECAP: You may recall from the previous film (note: I didn’t recall; thank Jebus for Wikipedia) that our protagonist Raquel (Clara Galle) was a humble young budding writer who fell for her rich-as-eff neighbor Ares (Julio Pena) after an asinine wifi mishap resulted in him climbing through her window so they could consummate their long-gestating EXPLOSIVE LUST. I’m condensing and simplifying things, but that’s it in a nutshell. It’s about a year later, and Raquel is studying lit at a local university and working to publish her OMG-amazingly well-written book titled Through My Window while Ares is off in Stockholm studying medicine after passing on his predestined post at his megarich family’s megacorporation. They haven’t seen each other in, I dunno, many millenniums. Has absence made their hearts grow fonder or fungus? Well, I smell something here, and it’s definitely not fondness.
It’s the end of the school year. Raquel gets chewed by her prof for writing real good but not being a real good student because she’s always texting Ares. And Ares’ ass be flunking real good and he spends his nights writhing around in a hot funky depression. They’ve been yearning real hard. Oh, their yearning is mighty and vast. Raquel leaves her last lecture and hangs with her besties Yoshi (Guillermo Lasheras) and Daniela (Natalia Azahara), and staves off the nice-guy romantic interest of her classmate Greg (Ivan Lapadula), and turns around and who’s standing there but Ares, who somehow knew exactly where she’d be even though she probably didn’t know exactly where she’d be. Must be some really potent pheromones hanging in the air there, and this is when we realize nine incredibly long, incredibly tedious minutes have passed without a sex scene. Well, at least a sex scene that isn’t a fantasy dreamt up by Ares and Raquel while they have phone nookie.
Ares doesn’t even ask before he whisks Raquel off to his family’s seaside manse – he broke into her house and packed a bag for her, including all her skimpiest bathing suits, which was so very nice of him. They’re about to pull down each other’s pants in a frenzy of prurience when whaddaya know, his brothers Apolo (Hugo Arbues) and Artemis (Eric Masip) arrive, and so do Daniela and Yoshi, and Claudia (Emilia Lazo) the family housekeeper who’s secretly banging Artemis, and Ares’ parents. It’s a got dang party now, so everyone hits the pool to partake in a montage of close-up ice-cream-cone licking cut with not-quite-as-close-up softcore genital confluence, hopefully all followed by plenty of hydration, because between the heavy dairy consumption and the gross exchange of fluids, someone’s bound to get the bends.
Complications occur that are so banal and wispy they’d be blasted right out of the movie by a gnat fart, but I’m obligated to get into it, at least a little. Claudia wants to stop sneaking around with Artemis and make their relationship public and official. Yoshi seems to be harboring a crush on Raquel but a new character named Anna (Carla Tous) not so subtly expresses interest in jumping his bones. Greg, whose family just so happens to own a nearby restaurant, definitely harbors a crush on Raquel, and he just so happens to know Ares, too. Small world! But – how are Ares and Raquel doing? Peachy keen! Until – uh oh – his childhood friend Vera (Andrea Chaparro) crashes the party and is incredibly bubbly and outgoing and seems to have spent a lot of time with Ares recently, which he never seemed to mention to Raquel. Her arrival sets off the first of the many petty jealousies comprising this sub-imbecilic plot. Will Raquel and Ares’ romance endure, or are we just here to watch all the attractive young people drop their bottoms and thrust their butts?
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: The Through My Windows are terrible, but they lack the possibly unintentional comedy of 50 Shades of Grey and the appalling toxicity of the 365 Dayses. Meanwhile, over on Prime Video, the similarly themed My Fault has been drawing heavy viewership of late.
Performance Worth Watching: Let’s forego the superhuman Plastic-Man stretching required to levy a compliment at the cast (the screenplay doesn’t help them a bit, to be fair), and just say that the cinematographer appears to be quite the expert in photographing torsos and glutes.
Memorable Dialogue: Ares invokes the films’ signature symbolic visual motif when he explains how he got into Raquel’s house to pack her stuff for a weekend away: “Let’s say I’m good with windows.”
Sex and Skin: Scads and heaps and mounds of it, but never giving us a full-frontal eyeful.
Our Take: A long, viscous string of drool hangs precariously from my lip like Tom Cruise on a cliff face. It has the viscosity of camel sputum. It snaps off and twists in the wind as it falls, down, down, down. The sun beats on my face like a beaver tail slapping mud betwixt the brittle bows of its den. I thirst. This ordeal has just begun and I’m already parched and desperate. Am I dying? I think I’m dying. Somewhere along the path to this predicament I had made a grave mistake. Regret bubbles into my throat like hot bile. Do I deserve to go out like this? With such great suffering? I swallow it down hard like a horse pill scraping down my desiccated throat. It’s only 111 minutes, I tell myself. You’ll be OK. But I’m a liar and I know it.
However! Fear thee not, dear reader. I persevered. I do not pen this missive from the beyond. I wrapped the leather bridle straps around my chapped hands and hung on for dear life through this maelstrom of pointless hokum, which inevitably concludes with a cliffhanger (which is so calculable as to be laughable), but not before all the principal characters have shown their asses in fits of animal aphrodisia. Sex is to this movie as oxygen is to the mammalian lung – it goes in and it goes out with such frequency, we no longer notice it’s even happening. These people are all himbo CHUDs and gussied bimbos, save for the two odd-duck characters (you can differentiate them by their wildly colored hair) who are socially awkward but not so much that they can’t aim their pudenda in the right direction.
I’ve seen many of this type of movie, the type that exists to string together sex scenes with laughably kitschy plot dreck. But Through My Window 2 forgets that it should be winking at us and nudging our ribs, and might just be insisting we take seriously the empty emotional overtures of its very pretty, very petty characters. It may hope you’ll take solace in all the f—ing. So much f—ing. Too bad it also f—ing sucks.
Our Call: CAST IT OUT TO SEA! SKIP IT.