Review 'Afternoons of solitude': The bullfight Doc. by Albert Serra

The poetic title, Afternoons of solitude (Tardes de Soledad), might evoke tranquility and relaxation, perhaps a few lazy hours in a hammock with a book. But don't be fooled. Albert Serra's fascinating portrait of the twenty-seven-year-old Peruvian bullfighter Andrés Roca Rey, and the controversial Spanish tradition in which he emerged as a star, never downplays the visceral brutality of what is essentially a blood sport as performance art. Anyone with a low threshold for animal cruelty will find this a harrowing watch, but for those who have the stomach for it, the doc is a unique study in discipline, bravado, laser focus and showmanship.

Serra, known for slow cinema's stripped-down narratives that can be both seductive and distant, had something of an international breakthrough with 2022. Pacification. This departure from nonfiction highlights many qualities familiar to its dramatic characteristics, including the atmospheric, almost dreamlike state; long shots, usually from a fixed angle; repetitions; the contemplative silences; the embrace of moral ambiguity. The film was screened at the New York Film Festival following its world premiere in competition in San Sebastian, where it won the festival's top award, the Golden Shell.

Working again with cinematographer Artur Tort, Serra creates an immersive experience that effectively brings us closer to the confrontation between man and beast as he casually considers – strictly through observation – the psyche of a taciturn subject. The film immediately positions itself as one of the most unflinching depictions of bullfighting ever made, admittedly a limited canon.

Pedro Almodóvar playfully explored the erotic allure of the bullfighter (matador) and the intersection of sex and violence in the 1986 film Matadorwhile Francesco Rosi weighed the spectacle of bullfighting with its primordial ferocity in 1965 The moment of truth. But the 1957 film adaptation of The sun also risesby literature's most famous bullfighting enthusiast, Ernest Hemingway, was widely dismissed as a Hollywood blunder, even by its author. Hemingway's 1932 book on the subject, Death in the afternoonmay have partly inspired Serra's title.

Animal welfare protesters have brought a decline in popularity to traditional Spanish-style bullfighting, but it remains legal in most of the country, as well as Portugal, southern France, Mexico and much of South America. Its defenders insist that bullfighting is not a sport, but an ancient ceremony rooted in the nation's proud heritage – more celebration than slaughter. Serra apparently takes no position on the controversial nature of his topic, but the stark details of Tort's images, with their blazing colors and graphic violence, seem destined to spark ongoing discussion.

The film opens in what appears to be an arena housing a bull, a magnificent creature with a shiny black coat. He paces back and forth in agitation, his hips rising with each breath and his mouth dripping saliva. As perhaps the dark atmosphere of Marc Verdaguer and Ferran Font's score suggests, this is the only time Afternoons of solitude when we see one of the animals not charging a matador into the ring or being struck by a spear, pierced with banderillas (barbed darts), and finally felled by a sword driven deep between the shoulder blades.

In one of the travel sequences that regularly punctuate the documentary, Roca Rey is introduced sweating profusely in a car on his way to an event in dazzling matador garb. He remains mostly silent as his cuadrilla, or entourage, showers him with praise and encouragement. The amount of time these guys spend admiring his gigantic set of balls indicates how intertwined bullfighting is with swaggering machismo.

The film incorporates extensive footage of major bullfighting events in cities including Madrid, Seville and Bilbao. We watch Roca Rey perform pre-fight religious rituals such as kissing rosary beads before placing them around his neck or touching a portrait of a weeping Madonna and making the sign of the cross several times.

Serra also shows us the elaborate process of wearing a traditional dress, known as a traje de luces, or dress of lights, for its sequins, jewels, and gold and silver threads. I will confess that seeing Roca Rey slip into sheer stockings pulled up to his chest, and then be helped by a dresser to pull the decorative pants called taleguilla as high and tight as corsets, all I could think was, “What if he gets anxious and needs to pee before getting in the ring?”

It is difficult to observe a bull, angered by nererilleros waving their cloaks, ram the armored flanks of a horse carrying a picador (spear-wielding rider), or the reddest blood spread along the animal's coat as the darts sharp points are stuck like flags on the neck and shoulders. Even tougher is watching Roca Rey execute the final killing blow of his sword after further tiring the wounded bull with repeated blows to the cape.

But there is a hypnotic grace to the wild spectacle that cannot be denied, particularly in the way the animals' movements echo those of the matador. He is alternately balletic and wild, often snorting as loudly as a bull.

There's an almost mad glint in Roca Rey's eyes during the bullfight's climax, and it never diminishes its intensity, even in the rare moments when he turns to the roaring crowd in the stands to drink in adulation. We see him gored more than once, and in the most gruesome case he is pinned against a barricade by an enormous pair of horns. But the bullfighter never loses courage, turning back when others probably would have sought medical attention.

Of course, none of this will ever justify the horror of watching a dying bull collapse, defeated, still breathing with his tongue hanging out while a puntillero sticks a dagger into his spinal cord if he survives the sword. It's shocking to watch the spirit of a powerful beast being systematically broken, and it's disturbing to see the light go out in its eyes. Thankfully, we are spared the sight of ears being cut off like trophies, although seeing half-dead animals tied by their horns and dragged from the arena by a team of horses, leaving a trail of blood, is not an easily forgotten image. .

Serra lets those images speak for themselves, often accompanied by disturbing changes in the score. There is no commentary, no talking heads, no textual information, no reflections on his triumphs, not even from Roca Rey, whose face, for the most part, remains a stoic mask. Any thoughts on the violence we are witnessing are strictly ours, they were never given to us by the director. This does it Afternoons of solitudein its uncompromising way, a documentary as muscular and ferocious as the poor creatures who are ritually massacred in those arenas.