Directed by: Albert Serra
Distributed by: Grasshopper Films
Written by Eric Zhu
90/100
Conceived alongside his 2022 political thriller, “Pacifiction,” “Afternoons of Solitude” is Albert Serra’s first feature documentary, observing Peruvian bullfighter Andrés Roca Rey across four afternoons in the arena. Shot in telephoto long takes with little to no acknowledgment of an outside world, Serra once again works in the present, but molds reality into something elemental and timeless. In a way, the film is as simple as possible, iteratively following Rey in the arena, his limo, and hotel room, but the effect is otherworldly. By focusing so intently on the haptic specifics of bullfighting, unflinching in its examination of blood on fur, sweat on skin, knife on skull, the film is about the sport in the material and abstract.
Anchored by a predetermined outcome (the death of the bull) and a repetitive structure, “Afternoons of Solitude” is uninterested in spectacle, and even less interested in explicit condemnation. Serra’s primary concern is faithfully channeling bullfighting’s old-world aesthetics. His film is ethical (see: the nobility his montage confers on the bull), but he refuses to qualify the violence with context. Though he occasionally tips his hand (e.g. the bull is the one who’s actually solitary), the decadence is presented straight-faced so the suspended “Make Spain Great Again” time is experienced first as visceral, transfixing horror far before it registers as a parallel to the rise of fascism. The observations are all the more impactful for their organic origins.
A useful comparison is Serra’s own “The Death of Louis XIV.” Like that film, which considers the king as a body and as an imperial concept, “Afternoons of Solitude” uses Andrés Roca Rey to deconstruct the image of the torero. “The Death of Louis XIV” surrounded Jean-Pierre Leaud’s Sun King with a throng of doctors whose comic ineptitude could be due to the period’s scientific limitations or their own attempts at power. “Afternoons of Solitude” likewise functions as a cursed community portrait. Roca Rey is flocked by a group of sycophants, presumably failed or aspiring toreros themselves, who act as openers onstage and elevate Roca Rey to hypermasculine caricature. When he’s gored by a bull, but walks away with light injuries, they attribute it to abs of steel. After so much as flicking his wrist, they’re quick to shower him with praise, hyper-fixating on the size of his balls.
The sheer ridiculousness of Roca Rey’s lackeys, and Serra’s isolation of the ass-kissing to transitory spaces of black limos and hotel rooms, is indicative of the torero’s fantastical pageantry. The metaphorical burden of the costume is observed in Roca Rey’s morning routine, a 2-person affair in which the torero is carefully corseted and then violently stuffed into his garb. When Rey later prays in his hotel room, the superficiality of the gesture is undercut by his onstage brutality, filled with comments like “fuck the dead” or the triumphant mutilation of his opponent. The observation of Rey’s routine naturally exposes his image’s foundation in religion and masculinity.
In the arena, Roca Rey’s function as a nationalist symbol connects to a perennial Serra interest in the toxic persistence of colonial aesthetics. This lends a menacing subtext to Roca Rey’s treatment of the bulls, especially their expectation of docility. When an opponent puts up a fight, his team snarls that it’s actually the bull who’s a coward. If Serra’s unsentimental depiction of the torero has any empathy, it’s towards his animal body, forcibly thrust into its restrictive clothing, flung around the arena, performing its dance of death as if by possession. It’s certainly not lost on Serra that Roca Rey is a Peruvian made into a symbol of his historic colonizer.
This thematic interpretation of the film perhaps under-discusses the extent to which “Afternoons of Solitude” is a formal triumph. Featuring Arthur Tort’s predictably arresting cinematography, the sustained extremity is a uniquely cinematic vantage-point. Aside from occasional intrusions of the soundtrack, Serra’s film drifts around a forensic impasse. It’s closer to the action than any human eye, but psychological access is out of reach. Other reviewers have noted that the film may not be far off from a context-free ESPN broadcast, but that would discount the confidence of Serra’s craft, his precise framings and sinuous camera movement, his insistence on holding an image to its morbid conclusion. It especially discounts the expressionist color-grading of crimson blood, jet blacks, and supple, rosy flesh. Tort brings some of the Rococo voluptuousness of “The Death of Louis XIV” and “Liberté” to this film, giving it a sheen of impossible beauty. The intuitive musicality, forming a trio between man, bull, and cinema, is a tour-de-force.
The provocation of the film then is the violence and its aestheticization. Serra’s implication that the aesthetic of bullfighting is intrinsic to its horror is a powerful one. One side effect of our current moment’s constant stream of controversy is the feeling that words and images have lost all meaning. Among its myriad virtues, “Afternoons of Solitude” isolates one highly-politicized issue and forces us to look, showing us that these forms of nationalist iconography still harbor extreme, cosmic violence. In doing so, Serra performs a process of re-sensitization.
“Afternoons of Solitude” Trailer
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