After garnering global critical acclaim of his South Pacific Cold War espionage thriller throwback, Pacifiction, Albert Serra, the Catalan "enfant terrible" of cinema, offers a documentary on bullfighting.
A self-professed non-lover of the genre, Serra goes on to show the gory, testosterone and blood-filled world inside the bullring through the eyes of Andrés Roca Rey, a famed bullfighter from Peru. But again, this is Albert Serra film, so it is no ordinary documentary. In fact, it's anything but.
Filmed almost entirely in close-ups in and around the bullring, it is clear that Afternoons of Solitude's aim is quite different. With the help of Serra's close collaborator Artur Tort (Pacifiction, Death of Louis XIV) helming at the camera and also serving as an editor, the film has a striking consistency and rhythm to it.
The bullfight is a highly ritualized endeavor, beginning with the outfits: the montera (the Mickey Mouse hat that toreros wear), the tassels, the sparkly elaborate embroidery on the jacket, the pink pantyhose, the dainty satin shoes that resemble a ballerina's. And the actual bullfighting, with horse-mounted lancers and the whole cuadrilla first attacking the bull in order to tire them out until the matador steps in and finishes the job.
It's also highly gruesome business: streams of blood on the beast's back, the dirt, mud, mucus, the staring, strutting, and hollering, then death. The sight is not for the squeamish or animal lovers. There are multiple deaths of bulls in the film.
This highly ritualized killing has been a controversial tradition, criticized and protested from animal rights groups for years. Rightly or wrongly, Serra narrowly concentrates on what's in and around the ring, nothing else. This means nothing about Roca Rey, his entourage, the bulls; nothing. And this is what makes Afternoons of Solitude fascinating.
The sounds we hear are the heavy breathings of the beast and Roca Rey, his team feverishly singing praises in the ring over and over again: you got the biggest balls! You are the greatest! You are the most beautiful human being in the world!
With a pouty, gaping mouth, Roca Rey stares down his beasts, while strutting like Mick Jagger. The battles are tense and the danger imminent. He gets gored a couple of times yet sustains only minor injuries. In casual conversations, he hears about other toreros who have suffered broken ribs.
Afternoons of Solitude has more in common with Lucien Castraing Taylor (Leviathan, Sweetgrass) and the rest of the Sensory Ethnography Lab (SEL) filmmakers' outputs, portraying haptic images on screen. Plus, examining the machismo of the Spaniards associated with bullfighting, not narrated but shown directly with no guise or insinuation.
Serra's aim is capturing the purity: the purity of the ritual, the purity of the filmmakers who haven't had any prior experience with bullfighting, the purity of worship, the purity of self-assurance. The experience is hard to sit through, but the film is another worthy effort from one of the most adventurous filmmakers of our time.
Dustin Chang is a freelance writer. His musings and opinions on everything cinema and beyond can be found at www.dustinchang.com