Raquel has loved the boy next door for years. That is the premise of Through My Window, and the film never pretends to be about anything else. Marçal Forés mixes romance, drama and comedy around a situation nearly everyone recognises: the person you watch from a distance and expect nothing from. Then the neighbour, Ares Hidalgo, begins to feel something too, and his family objects. Nobody in the audience will wonder whether these two end up together. What matters is whether the route there is worth the trip, and for the most part it is, even if the film stumbles here and there.

The central device is a small, effective reversal. For Raquel, Ares has been a fantasy, and a safe one, because a fantasy asks nothing of her. Once he starts developing feelings for her, it demands an answer. That shift gives Clara Galle her best material. A long-held crush stops being a sweet private habit and becomes a real problem, and Galle plays it with restraint. She does not underline the character’s insecurity or turn it into a gag, so Raquel stays recognisable even when the plot steers her down well-worn paths. Julio Peña has the opposite job. Ares has to be desirable without feeling out of reach, and Peña manages it with an easy charisma that sometimes stays on the surface. Between them they carry the film, and when it works it is because they look like two people who could plausibly end up side by side.

Guillermo Lasheras as Yoshi and Natalia Azahara as Daniela supply the lighter notes. They matter more than their screen time suggests, because a film that calls itself romance, drama and comedy all at once can easily tip over into one of the three, and these two keep pulling it back toward the funny. They do not always succeed. The script treats them as satellites of the lead rather than as people with lives of their own, and I wanted more of them. Still, it is pleasant company.

The blend of genres is the most interesting thing about the film. A romance that agrees to pass through drama and comedy risks losing its thread. Through My Window mostly avoids that, because the premise is so plain: two neighbours and a feeling kept quiet for years. The tone rarely wobbles. The price of that steadiness is caution. At every fork, the safer road gets chosen. I suspect the film would have gained character had it leaned harder toward either the dramatic side or the comic one.

Where it weakens is the family opposition, the piece that is supposed to supply the tension. Apolo (Hugo Arbues) and Artemis (Eric Masip) share Ares’s surname, and all three carry names borrowed from Greek mythology. The choice paints the Hidalgos as something close to legend, larger than the girl next door, and I liked it on paper. The trouble is that the aura never turns into conflict. The synopsis promises feelings that grow in spite of the family’s objections, which makes good drama in theory. On screen the objection feels announced rather than lived. Abel Folk (Juan), Rachel Lascar (Sofía) and Pilar Castro (Tere) are capable actors, and Emilia Lazo appears as Claudia, but the script rarely gives any of them enough to push against the central pair. If the obstacle has no weight, nothing is urgent, and the film drifts.

That, to my mind, is the deeper flaw. Once Ares feels something too, whatever stands between the two has to come from outside, and the outside is the least developed part of the picture. What remains is a romance in which little gets in the way, so each hurdle is cleared without leaving a mark. A story like this needs a loss that hurts. We are told there would be a price. We almost never feel it.

Anyone who knows the genre can anticipate the beats: the approach, the doubt, the pressure from outside, the repair. Nothing here contradicts that expectation, and the film seems content with it. That is not a sin in itself, since romances live on repeating certain gestures, and the pleasure often lies in how a familiar gesture is performed. But it means the small details have to do the work the plot does not, and they do not always manage it. There are stretches where the story simply advances, without pausing to give the characters a moment that would stay with you after the credits.

Forés’s direction is functional. It serves the story without trying to dominate it, which counts for something in a genre where staging easily turns into noise. The same restraint, though, makes the film resemble many others of its kind. If anything separates it from them, it is the two leads and the sympathy with which they are written, not any particular way of telling the story.

That sympathy deserves a word. Nobody is made a fool of for wanting something. Raquel’s long, quiet feeling is treated as real emotion, not as a punchline, and the film does not abandon her even when it reaches for a laugh. Love set against a family’s disapproval is an old conflict, and many viewers will know some version of it first-hand. The film handles it kindly and without mockery. That is a modest achievement, but teen-leaning romances so often miss it that I noted it with some relief.

The verdict splits in two. Galle and Peña are good together; the story gives them little to fight. One fact does not cancel the other. Anyone looking for an easy romance with a couple worth following will leave satisfied. Anyone hoping the genre might take a bigger risk will find a picture that does exactly what its synopsis says and little more. I land somewhere in the middle. I understand it, I enjoy it in stretches, and it rarely moves me.

If Through My Window succeeds, it is because Galle and Peña convince us that these two neighbours deserve to find each other. If it falls short, it is because the script trusts them too much and itself too little. With a more serious family obstacle and a couple of scenes built to linger, it would have been a better film. As it stands, it is a pleasant romantic comedy that goes down without effort and slips away just as easily.