All right. A PS to the birthday scene analysis post, since I have figured out why it hurt disproportionally, and it has to do with the sound level and the use of (Mafin) sound motifs.
I am putting this under a cut since it it is a Mafin post, so it is part of the tag, but it has two caps of the birthday scene that include Cloe because I am referencing specific moments. Proceed at your own judgment.
Sound Department, I would like to report A MURDER.
Either there's a bunch of dudes (and dudettes) in there, thinking "ah, yes, Marta doing sexy/romantic things with ladies, didn't we have a few motifs for that? Reuse!"
Or we're ten levels down the Mafin rabbithole in evoking a core Mafin soundscape in a moment where Marta, on the surface, may make out with someone else, but the soundtrack says, "Hey, remember her wife, Fina? Who should actually be here? Who will be here again soon? Let's evoke her in your ears and in your mind!"
And what are they using? Two motifs tied to two of the most iconic Mafin sequences: one, the Car Wedding (ep. 269) and two, the Farewell Bed Scene (ep. 377).
How. Dare. !!
First, we have the gently unfurling upward piano arpeggio followed by resting strings, and it is used in ep. 500 when Marta asks Cloe "You like it?" after giving her the bracelet. (let's see; she gave Fina apartment keys, cake and a safe deposit key. And a dress with an opera ticket they never got to use. - Bitter?! Moi?!)
And where have we first heard that motif significantly (to my memory)?
In the car wedding. In the exaxt moment of "se me han echo eternas las horas sin ti", just before Fina relates how she locked herself in her room, curled up under her blanket and thought of Marta.
I am pavloved to that sound bit as The Mafin Wedding Soundtrack. How absolutely dare you unpack that in the office with anyone else. How dare you.
But. That motif also appears in 377. Here:
The moment Marta says, "Remember our first time together? The beginning of my life!"
...and that was also the night Fina left, which started this entire trajectory, and where Marta started to think in the aftermath that she had been abandonded, with Fina crushed by circumstance and, ultimately, not loving her back in equal manner. HOW. DARE!!
But. To add insult to injury, there is this moment of Marta in ep. 500, just a little later, when she is reminiscing about first meeting Cloe, and admits that she thought that Cloe was a snob (Marta, it's spelled "bully"):
We wil not go into the flirty smile/low voice there because otherwise the anise schnapps bottle will be empty. Because which sound motif do they unpack? The soft piano "three ascending seconds and a sixth drop" motif.
And that's the motif that opened the bed dialogue in the 377 bed scene, over Fina saying "Mi amor":
---On second thought, give me that anise bottle after all.
(also hey @anandabrat, is there still hiding space underneath your magnificent take on this Mafin Blanket?)
At this rate, I am not going to survive until Fina swaggers back into town to claim what's hers.
I’m watching “American Pickers” (which is two guys who go buying antiques) and these guys keep saying “his grandfather buried and Indian” and I’m freaking out over murder but they’re actually talking about an Indian Motorcycle
