Last Samurai Marta preparing to take back the company, just and brave!
We already lost our minds about this scene at the liquor cart on Tuesday, so this is collecting a few points that have also been made by @roadien60 and @bloomsberries, among others.
Look at the interplay of the Light, Positioning (Directing), Camera, and Costuming to get that perfectly aligned pose of Marta in her it-is-no-coincidence-this-looks-like-a-samurai-collar blouse! The just heroine has walked into the hallway to deliver justice and salvation and reclaim the family legacy! (it is no coincidence we get that blouse together with the Morpheus-trains-Neo-in-Matrix (1)-calm in opposing Gabriel also in 526!)
But first things first: Marta (possibly the only woman on earth who can pull off beige this way) stand a little off center to make a dynamic diagonale, but she is perfectly centered in the window behind her. Her position more to the right is balanced by the woman on the framed de la Reina heritage poster to the left, whose hairstyle and white top Marta matches.
Second, Marta is wearing a skirt that is beige like the company marble walls around her, but with a dark brown horizontal stripe on the top (it is mirrored also towards the bottom), and, in as a result, she is turned into a a personification of the company here: white, beige, dark brown in its hallways. Also, she is perfectly aligned horizontally: with the beige of the skirt to the beige of the marble, the white of the belt to the white light reflex line on the windowsill, the dark brown top line of the skirt matching the dark brown window frame, and then the white of the shirt matching the lit window behind her.
Guuuuuh this is so perfect I want to scream. Who in Costuming and Set Design and Directing thinks this up; don't you people ever sleep? (this is so staggeringly good, please never stop).
But, back to the start:
Past Cloe and the office, there is the Perfumerias de la Reina poster on display (I think it was there in recent eps? Didn't Pablo walk past it?). The woman on the poster has a hairstyle similar to Season 3 Marta. In contrast, we see Cloe in the office, in a bright green skirt that does not blend into the company colors, with a returing blouse with a bow, but note how the bow is here tied very small (to the sides), making it different from the times where it was used to create a parallel to the old dependienta blouse bows and Fina.
In walks Marta, who perfectly overlays the woman in the poster (also allowing a look at the skirt design with its two dark brown stripes - the top one aligning with the bottom poster frame in the hallway):
Up to here, Marta is still inside the poster frame, now she breaks it as if stepping out of it, like the true directora she is destined to become again, taking the company spirit and moving it forward (also the stripe on her skirt is still alighing with the poster frame on the wall aaaaaaaaahh):
Even when Marta and Cloe exit the office in an argument, Marta's mark is placed so that her head covers the head of the woman, and even the hair color is similar with how it is lit now:
Who is the company here, and who is the interloper?
As the discussion continues, Marta trying to convince Cloe to help her for the good for the company and Cloe being snappy, Marta is mirrored by the poster, both turned towards Cloe in their midst (here already on great diplay: the alignment of Marta's outfit with the marble/sill/window frame behind her):
And now we get to the staging of Heroic Marta fighing for the company, opposite a flippant Cloe:
Last Perfume Samurai to the rescue!
The amount of lines Marta gets, in relation to the company (also in the earlier breakfast scene with Digna), that deal in "brave", "valiant", "fair" and "just" are just stacked on and on.
Here we have Cloe asking, "you never give in, do you?", and Marta gets to proclaim "never!", but not in the simple form of "nunca", but in the more poetic and old-fashioned "¡jamás!" - if it is, again, "for a just cause" (that is, in this case, also profitable):
This leads us to an interesting Hitchcock supense frame, where we see the just heroine (for whom we are supposed to root), but we also see an information that Heroic Marta does not get (while we do), which is Cloe's calcluating face - and Cloe is still perfectly centered between the two heads (Marta and the poster), and here it really shows how small they tied her bow here (I'd wager because this scene is not about a parallel to Fina):
And once Cloe walks off, there she is, valiant and brave and just and NEVER giving up: the Last Samurai of the Perfumeria!
And - borrowing an image from the earlier breakfast scene with Digna, where Marta has also just said something about bravery and justice - this isprobably all of us at witnessing the insane detail work in this scene:
Tasio. What are you doing to that poor piece of silk. No. Just no.
(Luckily, Damián steps in and adjusts that knot, and of course it fits the narrative beautifully here and was probably done on purpose. But seeing that moment? Made me want to reach through the screen and Stop. That.)-
