Tamal Kundu
Directed by Marçal Forés, ‘Through My Window: Across the Sea’ is a teen romance film that revolves around Ares Hidalgo (Julio Peña) and Raquel (Clara Galle), two teenagers from vastly different financial backgrounds who fall in love against all odds. ‘Through My Window: Across the Sea’ is the second entry in the ‘Through My Window’ film series, which is based on the ‘Hidalgos’ series of books by Ariana Godoy. When the first film ends, Ares and Raquel are in a relationship, but the former goes to Stockholm to study medicine, whereas the latter remains in Barcelona to pursue a degree in literature. In ‘Through My Window: Across the Sea,’ the two protagonists are in a long-distance relationship. When Ares returns home to celebrate the San Juan festival with his girlfriend, revelations about possible infidelity are made. SPOILERS AHEAD.
Ares and Raquel’s Relationship Challenges
No, Ares didn’t cheat on Raquel. One evening, while Ares, Raquel, and their group are sailing on the Hidalgo family yacht, Raquel’s friend Daniela sends her a photo of Vera, Ares’ friend from the university, in Ares’ shirt. This sows the seeds of doubt in Raquel’s mind, combined with Ares’s past as someone who dated a new girl every few weeks. During a game of spin-the-bottle, she confronts Ares and Vera both with Daniela’s help. As it happens, Ares is wearing the very shirt Vera had in the photo, so Daniela asks whether anyone else wore the shirt beside him. Ares and Vera become alarmed, and the former states he doesn’t know. When the bottle spins again, it ends up pointing at Vera. Raquel asks her whether she and Ares had sex. When they stay silent, she takes it as an affirmation.
As Raquel begins to pack up her things, Ares comes to speak to her. He reveals that he was having trouble in Stockholm and wasn’t sure whether he wanted to study medicine any longer. At this point, he met Vera, and she helped him open up to the world around him. He made several friends through her and often went out with them for drinks and parties. Sometimes, he overdid it. The evening with the shirt was one of those nights.
In response, Raquel tells Ares she isn’t concerned about what happened between him and Vera. She claims what bothers her the most is that he didn’t speak to her about his problems. Ares confesses that he was afraid that he would look stupid, adding that it appeared Raquel was moving on with her life while Ares was stuck.
The relationship between Raquel and Ares becomes frigid after that. They rarely speak to each other, and Raquel goes to the festival with her friends while Ares stays behind at his family’s property. Vera comes out and starts swimming, asking Ares to join her, but he declines. She eventually confesses that she knows nothing happened between them that night except that she put on his shirt.
Upon hearing this, Ares calls Vera a liar and demands to know why she didn’t say anything about this earlier. Vera rejects these accusations, insisting that the others wouldn’t have known anything about that night if he hadn’t looked so guilty during the game. They are interrupted when Ares sees Yoshi falling off a cliff and rushes to help him. Unfortunately, he is unsuccessful, and the other boy dies.
At Yoshi’s funeral, Vera and Ares have another big fight. Vera gets on the stage to deliver a eulogy and calls her relationship with Ares temporary and a mistake, prompting the latter to return to Stockholm. It is implied that Ares and Raquel will soon start dating Vera and Gregory, respectively. However, the film’s mid-credits sequence includes scenes from the third ‘Through My Window’ film, in which it is implied that Ares will come back to Barcelona and that his and Raquel’s feelings for each other are still there.
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