‘Afternoons of Solitude’ Review: Albert Serra Observes the Matador Life In All Its Absurd Beauty and Obscene Bloodshed
variety.comGuy Lodge Film Critic Albert Serra‘s “Afternoons of Solitude” begins not taking the bull by the horns, but looking it in the eye.
It opens on a blunt close-up of a magnificent bovine specimen staring straight to camera, its gaze somehow confrontational, even as its pupils are nearly lost in the glossy obsidian monument of its head.
The beast presumably doesn’t know it’s about to die, but seems angrily resigned to its fate anyway — or more likely we feel angry on its behalf, and project that back onto this regal image.
In the course of the next two hours, Serra’s extraordinary documentary about the ritual grandeur and violent indignity of Spanish bullfighting will never again observe its animal victims quite so intimately, but neither do we forget the shot: Even as the film’s focus shifts to the bull’s human conqueror, star Peruvian torero Andrés Roca Rey, it’s that doomed stare that haunts us.
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