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My Review
Male society
Gloomy, throbbing, forceful, metaphoric and thought-provoking are some of the adjectives that describe the Goya-nominated short film, El Orden de las cosas. It was released in 2010 and directed by the Esteban Alenda brothers, as it’s not an animated short film, we can see the thespian, the film stars the peerless Javier Gutiérrez as the middle-aged Marcos, Manuela Vellés as Julia and Biel Durán as the young abuser. The script was written by Diana Moral Arribas and the score was composed by the mighty Sergio de la Puente. El orden de las cosas was produced by José Esteban Alenda and Nina Frese, and the film’s production companies were Solita Films and Flux Film.

The film unfolds the story of a young man called Marcos, who was searching for his belt and he asked her wife if she had seen it before, as she didn’t answer, Marquitos emptied the water of the bath, in which Julia was having a bath, and he put her ring on her finger once again, telling her that he would love her forever. As the short film passed by, the son of the “partner” grew old, and in his 8 years old, the son searched the belt with his father, who was always accusing the woman to hide it, all of a sudden, the child put his hand into the bath’s water, where he found the overwhelmed belt, but fortunately, he saw all that injuries, most of which were caused by de belt, along his mother’s body so Marquitos decided to leave the belt where it was. For me, the next scene is one of the most important scenes of the whole short amazing film: in that moment, in order to dissimulate, their son left his red plain so it fell and broke, all of a sudden, his father promised his son that he would fix that plane, and when they left the bathroom, Marquitos tried to close the door of the
order of things, all of a sudden, his wife ran to that place and they cleaned the breakage. Then, the brothers encouraged Marcos to ask Julia where was that belt, so Marcos closed the door of the bathroom and the cycle got to the explosion. As time passed by, the cycle started again with the honeymoon, where Marcos, who had grown old during the last scene, told Julia how much he loved her, so the woman decided to give his husband the belt, which was into the water, Marcos first smiled but when he saw that Julia didn’t want to give him the belt, the explosion started again as he started to stretch the belt harder and harder, that was the straw that broke the camel’s back as all of a sudden, the level of the water started increasing until it covered both bodies. At the end, we could see how the plane disappeared and the woman took off this ring, Julia swam to the surface and she realized that she was in the sea, the free woman swam to the beach and she started walking away from a lot of baths with a belt near them.
For me, the best part of that short film is the direction and the script, as Estaban brothers knew how to express the feelings and actions of the aggressor and the victim, so I think that in that case the sentence “Is her fault if he is aggressive” rejected since the very beginning, this fact is proved as the film was a Goya-nominated so it was considered one of the best fiction short films of 2011, from my point of view, the judges of the Goya awards scorned the short film and they thought the problem the video depicted was far away from our reality, so I must say that gender violence was not a problem of the last century, it’s an actual problem which is affecting nowadays to millions of women, so nominating the short film to the best fiction short film is a lack of respect for that millions of women who are suffering gender violence in 2021. Apart from the direction, I think that the script and scenography were thought-provoking and gripping, as there were a lot of elements which had a metaphoric representation, one example of it is the water of the bath: the water represented the different cycles of the gender violence, as when the bath was filled with water, it meant that there was about to be an explosion, and when the level of the water decreased, the explosion had passed so they were on the honeymoon. I think that this fact needs a lot of hours of reflexions, what is more, from my point of view, the short film should have won a Goya for the small, but relevant, fact of the metaphors, they have such a huge importance in the short film that the end of it can change depending to the viewer thanks to all the metaphors. As I said, Sergio de la Puente was who composed the whole score, his songs are powerful, thought-provoking, breath-taking and heart-breaking, so they are amazing, as
were totally balanced, I could hear that the dialogues always prevailed compared to the score, as it must be. Almost all the film passes in a blue bath, and as we could see in the sleeve of the short film, it had a dramatic, poignant, out of ordinary and enigmatic decoration, as there was a blue wall without any picture or some kind of designs, the decoration depicted the isolation and minimisation of the woman, as I supposed that the man didn’t let her decorate the room so she should have been feeling uncomfortable during her infinite bath. The film depicts gender violence so it full of make-up , the most important examples of make-up are the bruises of the woman, firstly, the woman only had some bruises in her arm but as time passed by, her bruises increased and she finally had a bruise in her eye, they were really well-done because as I said before, you feel like if you were inside the film living that specific scene, so we can feel the reality, that all they do is true as it is happening in our real life, for that simple reason, I can say that the make-up was amazing, powerful and thought-provoking.
As far as I’m concerned, I think that this short film will change the way you think about the real world, because it depicts a problem which is mostly hidden behind the stereotypes, and also is a topic which in some homes can’t talk about it so all the children who can grow old in that type of houses will never now how to fight against gender violence and how to recognize it. So, on a scale from one to five, I give this film a five. When I saw that the director had been able to make us feel inside the short film, I felt amazing as if the viewer sees the film from a different perspective which is not the one of Julia, he or she won’t understand the film as they won’t understand why the situation was dangerous and mortal for the woman. Finally, for all that reasons, I would recommend the film as it literally brought tears to my eyes!


room in order to protect his mother, but his father reacted abruptly, saying that the bathroom’s door should be always open. Fortunately, they didn’t find the belt and Marquitos grew up again, the son realized that his mother had been illtreated since he was a child so Marquitos tried to escape from that jail with his dear mother, but she never answered so he left the house alone. One day, Marquitos called his father in order to talk to his mother, but as an aggressor he was, Marcos didn’t let his wife talk with Marquitos to isolate her from the rest of the society. Suddenly, Marcos’ brothers got into the house, in which they had planned to meet some days before to have dinner, and when one of his brothers realized that Julia didn’t prepare the dinner, he threw a wineglass to the floor in order to “teach” his brother which was the
throughout the short film, the score depicted Julia’s mood, that fact made us feel like the main character, so in this case, we could feel like if we were inside the isolated bath, I must say that we saw no violence in the short film, we only could see the bruises but not the extreme violence that the man did against her, that’s also a reflection of our society, because we only see statistics about women’s death, but we can’t feel the pain and violence behind these deaths. As it wasn’t an animated film, recorded scenes can not be recorded again by the thespian, but the editors of a non-animated film can change every single mistake by means of a computer, and I have to say that I couldn’t find errors during the film, so the editors made a great job as the score and the dialogues