Complete first draft for LAFCA.
Even more than most of the seven or so films that make up Albert Serra's oeuvre, one of the most daring in recent cinema, Afternoons of Solitude defies typical classification. Ostensibly (and vividly) a portrait of Spanish bullfighting, a centuries-old ritual cloaked in equal parts machismo, brutality, and physical grace, the documentary quickly dissolves into a haze of motion and vivid color as the viewer is drawn into the orbit of matador Andrés Roca Rey over the course of what appears to be five separate fights, each ending in the violent death of the toro, and a few telling scenes of him between these bouts. Roca Rey has been alternately called the best and the worst bullfighter in the world, a dichotomy that Serra seems to actively court in his study of the startlingly fresh-faced man's movements through these hallowed, blood-soaked arenas. To an unusual extent for most non-narrative films, Afternoons of Solitude is keyed into performance, as Artur Tort's long-lensed camera captures Roca Rey's exertions and grotesque facial contortions that cut a striking contrast with his taciturn, pensive affect outside of the ring, captured as he sits motionless in a van while his compatriots/lackeys excessively praise him or while he's being fitted in ornate outfits intended to be stained with viscera. For Serra's hypnotic approach, a series of theatrical gestures and anticipation, does not shy away from the inherent cruelty of this perverse form of public entertainment. Though the times when Roca Rey does get seriously injured jolt the viewer, what lingers in the mind is not the ultimate triumph of the "protagonist," but something captured in the film's first images of a bull and Roca Rey: the bestiality of humanity and vice versa, hauntingly laid bare and transfigured by Serra in one of the world's most barbaric traditions.
