Between Father and Son
ファーザー・アンド・サン
Storyline
The whole story, ending included.
A lawyer visiting her fiancé's family estate falls for his son and digs into the disappearance of his first wife; a Mexican micro-series in ten-minute episodes.
Bárbara, a successful lawyer, has just become engaged to Álvaro, an airline pilot who has never come to terms with the disappearance of his first wife, Fernanda, missing for six years and declared dead. He takes her to La Perla, the Sarmiento family estate, to meet his mother, Margarita, his sister, Gaby, and his teenage daughter, Leo, none of whom welcome his remarriage. Walking in the woods, Bárbara meets a young man outside a cabin, and he kisses her; at dinner she learns that he is Álvaro's son, Iker, who lives alone in the woods and has a girlfriend, Luna.
Bárbara and Iker begin an affair under Álvaro's roof, while she tries to learn what happened to Fernanda. Gloria Villaseca, a lawyer who has spent years digging into the family, is shot dead, and Franco, the cousin with whom Fernanda once had an affair, is poisoned before he can tell Bárbara what he knows. Then Bárbara herself is abducted.
The secret is Margarita's. Years earlier she poisoned her husband after learning of his affairs, and when Fernanda found out, she ordered Gaby to have her killed. Gaby, whose only friend had been Fernanda, could not do it, and has kept her captive for six years in the ruins of Los Cipreses, another family estate. Iker and Álvaro track Bárbara there. Gaby opens fire: she wounds Fernanda and, aiming at Bárbara as she runs, shoots her own brother. Margarita and Gaby are arrested, Margarita blaming her daughter as the police take them away.
A year later Fernanda, who survived, is back with her children, and Álvaro has died of his wound. Bárbara is with Iker, and says she regrets nothing.
Starring
Pamela Almanzaas Bárbara
A successful lawyer who visits her fiancé's family estate and falls for his son.
Bárbara’s story
Bárbara is a successful lawyer, newly engaged to Álvaro and uneasy that he will not talk about his first wife. At La Perla the family is cold to her, and the young man who kissed her in the woods turns out to be Álvaro's son, Iker. She stays anyway. She sleeps with Iker under his father's roof while she investigates Fernanda's disappearance, and the two people who might help her, the lawyer Gloria Villaseca and the cousin Franco, are both killed. Abducted and taken to the ruins of Los Cipreses, she finds Fernanda alive. A year after the shooting that kills Álvaro, she is with Iker, and says she regrets nothing.
Graco Sendelas Iker
Álvaro's son, who lives alone in a cabin in the woods to get away from his family's secrets.
Iker’s story
Iker lives alone in a cabin in the woods near La Perla, away from family secrets he cannot bear, and has a girlfriend, Luna. He kisses Bárbara before either knows who the other is, and when she appears at dinner as his father's fiancée he pursues her anyway, while asking her to stop digging into what happened to his mother, Fernanda. Their affair goes on in the house and in the woods; an ultimatum pushes Bárbara away from him and passion brings her back. When she disappears, he sets aside his quarrel with Álvaro and they find her at Los Cipreses together. There his father is shot and his mother is found alive. A year later he is with Bárbara.
Erick Elíasas Álvaro
Bárbara's fiancé, an airline pilot who has never recovered from his first wife's disappearance.
Álvaro’s story
Álvaro is an airline pilot who has lived for six years with the disappearance of his first wife, Fernanda, whose search through the woods he still cannot talk about. Newly engaged to Bárbara, he brings her to La Perla, where his mother and sister make her unwelcome, and he meets her questions about Fernanda with anger. He had asked his son, Iker, to make Bárbara feel welcome, and begins to suspect how far that has gone. When Bárbara disappears, he puts aside his quarrel with Iker and the two find her in the ruins of Los Cipreses, where Fernanda has been held all along. There his sister, Gaby, firing at Bárbara as she runs, shoots him, and he dies of the wound.
Natalia Plascenciaas Gaby
Álvaro's sister, raised under her mother's control, who knows what happened to Fernanda.
Carmen Delgadoas Margarita
Álvaro's mother, the head of the family, who opposes his remarriage from the start.
Why it matters
Between Father and Son was among the first Netflix originals to borrow the form of the short-drama apps from Korea and China: twenty episodes of seven to eleven minutes, each ending on a hook. Its creator, Pablo Illanes, compresses a family thriller and a forbidden romance into that frame, and the compression becomes the subject: desire arrives in seconds and asks nobody's permission. Its heroine chooses her fiancé's son, says at the end that she regrets nothing, and keeps him, while the older women of the family carry the story's crimes: a wife who poisoned an unfaithful husband, and a daughter so controlled by her mother that she spent six years guarding a prisoner she could not bring herself to kill. What the series leaves open is how far a love that begins as a transgression can get from the family it was born in.