El orden de las cosas (2010) User Reviews (3)

Where Is That BELT?

[rmax304823 · 7/10 · 24 September 2014]

The psychoanalysts and the feminists would finally join hands in applauding this one. Well, I guess you can't clap while you're holding hands but you can whistle and shout "Bravo!" Julia is a young woman of no spectacular beauty seated in a bath tub and completely covered by water. A young man, her husband, drains the water and replaces the wedding ring that has slipped from her finger. "Where is my belt?", he keeps asking her, as if she has deliberately hidden it, which, in fact, she has, under her naked body. Hubby keeps carrying on about the damned belt. It was given to him by his father and passed on by the fathers before him.

Julia's young son finds the belt under the bath water but the notices that his terrified mother's arms and back are covered with belt-shaped bruises. We begin to get the picture and so does the son, who hides the belt again.

See, the belt is a symbol of our dominant and brutal patriarchy. Men have all the power. It's passed from one generation to the next. It's "el orden de las cosas." Time passes. Her son matures and leaves the house, begging for Julia to come with him, rejecting the belt, so to speak. (O, Freud, where are you?) The husband grows older but Julia shows not a wrinkle and says not a word. She sits silently, naked, hugging herself, occasionally sobbing.

After what appears to be about twenty years, visitors come, her relatives and in-laws, for dinner, but they all side with the husband and chide Julia for not revealing the location of the belt. They accuse the husband of not being a man.

It's a very powerful statement. The problem is that it's so overdone, it's charred. First of all, the sentence pronounced is too harsh to properly fit the crime. Spanish husbands don't routinely whip their wives with belts. I suppose some do, but then every society has its deviants.

Women rarely use belts as instruments of punishment, but my mother could wield one well when I misbehaved and when she didn't have a Kochloeffel close at hand. When dealing with grown men, women seem to prefer insults and poison as weapons, if my ex wife and Agatha Christie are any guides.

I'm kind of kidding around with the moral message but the fact is that we do get the idea long before the short is over, and it's only ten minutes long or something like that. Given it's chief weakness, which is underestimating its audience, it's a gripping film, one you won't find easy to dismiss.

THE ORDER OF THINGS. DIRECTOR'S MEMOIR.

[nigvaster · 7/10 · 2 February 2022]

"The Order of Things" is about gender violence, and from the beginning we have decided to abandon the path of realism and make a symbolic and intentionally surreal interpretation of reality to provoke a reflexive response in the viewer, very different from that provoked by the crude reality shown as it is. The short film tries to shock by refusing at all times to show violence explicitly. Through the use of visual metaphors (drops of water), the aim is to convey the helplessness and suffering caused by the abuse and all its effects, showing the bruises but not the blows. In the story, there are two main objects: the belt and the bathtub. On the one hand, the belt is the symbol of the traditional values that over many generations have been subjugating the female gender in favor of the male. He wants this legacy of values to continue, and hopes that his son Marquitos will accept the belt with all that it implies. And although at first he seems to succeed in educating him to that effect, fortunately in the end he decides to refuse. This refusal increases Marcos' frustration.

Like a lion tamer with his whip, Marcos uses the belt to tame Julia's values. However, she refuses to jump through hoops by hiding the belt. She does not rebel by attacking her tamer, but stands by, waiting. Actually, both wait for the other to change, but that won't happen unless one gives in. And it would be a satisfactory relationship as long as it was always clear who dominates whom. But the fact that she refuses to accept that makes him desperate, making it all a real pain for him.

The other important element in the story is the bathtub where Julia finds her refuge and, at the same time, her prison. Throughout the story, the water in the bathtub is a faithful reflection of the feelings and moods of the protagonist. Julia, drop by drop, little by little, gathers the necessary courage to react. The bathtub slowly fills until it overflows, just as Julia's feelings also overflow in an irreversible and irrepressible cascade of pain and rage accumulated over a lifetime of suffering. And after flooding the bathroom, Julia rises to the surface, appearing in the middle of the ocean, something as liberating as it is terrifying, since after freeing oneself from an abusive relationship a person is afraid to face the world alone, feeling insignificant like a shipwrecked person in the middle of the ocean. She will have to swim a long way to find solid ground and be able to mark her own path in the sand.

"The Order of Things" aims to highlight the change of values that has fortunately taken place in today's society by revealing the injustice of certain values that should remain obsolete. It intends to say that there is light at the end of the road, and that although the road is full of suffering, it is never too late to find hope. The bathtubs stranded on the seashore are the symbol of the life left behind, and the footsteps in the sand the hope of the new life that begins. The fact that there are several bathtubs means that she is one more of the women who have been freed from their particular prison.

"The Order of Things" is a short film about hope. The false hope that a tragic life can change by itself, and the true hope that a decision made in time can make us start a new life that will surely be better.

Text taken from the short film's press dossier.

The order of chaos

[Horst_In_Translation · 4/10 · 7 April 2016]

"El orden de las cosas" or "The Order of Things" is a Spanish 20-minute live action short film from 6 years ago written and directed by the Alenda Brothers. The cast isn't bad and the story early on also has a couple good moments. The first jump in time was very smartly done. But overall, I still believe this was not a good watch. The plot just becomes too absurd and metaphorical at some point. Is it drama? Horror? Mystery? Thriller? Difficult to say. And the feel-good ending felt somewhat forced. Why not go with them drowning. Anyway, I personally did not enjoy this one as much as I hoped, mostly to the uninspired second half of the film. I do not recommend the watch. If you still want to check it out, make sure you have subtitles unless you're fluent in Spanish.