The creator and director, Pablo Illanes, places the conflict of ‘Between father and son’ on the slippery slope of forbidden desires and bedroom secrets, but with a structure that draws on the frenetic pace of microcontent applications. The twenty episodes, lasting close to ten minutes each, turn the experience into a succession of head-on collisions where the viewer receives information in spurts, sacrificing the slow construction of the atmosphere for a relentless advance of revelations. The commitment to maintaining the traditional horizontal format denotes a certain intention to distinguish itself from its digital cousins, although the editing, sharp and direct, reveals a narrative designed to retain attention in each small cut.
The main plot follows Barbaraa lawyer who arrives at the ranch Sarmientowhere her fiancé Alvaroa pilot who hides a shady past, hopes to rebuild his life. The shock occurs when meeting ikerÁlvaro’s son, with whom he establishes an immediate physical connection that transforms into a clandestine romance. The series unfolds its interest in two parallel lines: on the one hand, the soap opera of the love triangle between father, son and future stepmother; On the other hand, the investigation into the disappearance of FernandoÁlvaro’s first wife and Iker’s mother, who serves as a macguffin to justify Bárbara’s stay in the place. The characters lack complex psychological development, since their actions are explained by abrupt emotional leaps justified by passion or revenge, turning Bárbara into a passive agent who discovers family crimes almost by chance, while Iker oscillates between adolescent obsession and filial loyalty without the script offering nuances.
The responsibility for the crimes ultimately falls on the maternal figures, Gaby and Daisywho have manipulated Fernanda’s destiny and murdered the patriarch. This twist introduces a reflection on the perpetuation of violence within the family nucleus, where the matriarch pulls the strings of horror to maintain appearances, turning the hacienda into a golden prison. Illanes’ direction emphasizes closed frames and the play of shadows in the interiors, an aesthetic reminiscent of that of filmmakers such as Rodrigo Sorogoyen in his early works, where the domestic space becomes a psychological battlefield. However, the brevity of the episodes prevents the suspense from breathing, and the murders of Franc and Gloria Villaseca They are resolved in haste, diluting the tension in favor of an ending where the forbidden love between Bárbara and Iker triumphs while Álvaro is shot dead upon discovering his wife alive, a resolution that whitens the initial betrayal.
The series exposes a lax morality where transgressions are forgiven if the person affected dies or if the antagonists are responsible. Bárbara suffers a kidnapping and several murder attempts, but leaves the hacienda happily with the young man who courted her, without assuming any guilt for having deceived her fiancé. Fernanda, the great victim, returns to find herself with a corpse husband and children who have already remade their loyalties, leaving her figure reduced to a mere plot device to close the case. By eliminating Álvaro, the narrative avoids a direct confrontation between the deceived adult and the lovers, thus avoiding delving into the consequences of their actions. ‘Between father and son’ It works like an express soap opera that demands from the public a continuous suspension of critical judgment, rewarding those who transgress the rules as long as they do so with sufficient determination and punishing with death or prison those who try to preserve family order with violent methods, a simple moral equation for a story that promised more shadows than it finally offers.
Review prepared by Andrés Gómez
