The outrageous risk, callous ego and futile hunger that drive a star matador are in the frame of Catalan renegade Albert Serra’s unusual, much-debated take on Spain’s most controversial ritual.
Afternoons of Solitude 2024
Tardes de soledad
Catalan filmmaker Albert Serra is famed (or notorious, to some) as an uncompromising, provocative maverick in Europe’s film scene; a man of brazen statements and audacious works. So, it follows that he would be the director to make this most divisive portrait of Spain’s most controversial spectacle – and to defy all conventions of documentary filmmaking in doing so. Is bullfighting an act of barbarism, or an art of daring? Serra refuses to take a side in this intense, observational view onto the gory phenomenon, which does not glorify, nor seek to disguise its fascination.
We start with a bull, its eyes staring directly at us from its sleek black head, its heavy breath betraying its fear. The creature has no choice in this dance of death, we understand, unlike the ambitious torero, in his own nervous, mortal sweat.
Peacocking around in a gem-encrusted ensemble that often ends up drenched in blood, there is an absurdity to Peruvian superstar Andrés Roca Rey’s vain posturing and turbo-charged machismo, as we accompany him in his obsessive, extreme routine between hotel rooms, vehicle interiors where an entourage puffs up his courage, and Spanish arenas, on his unending and never fully satiated quest for applause. — Carmen Gray