Afternoons of Solitude (Albert Serra, 2024)

On one level, this is Serra's least difficult film to date - a direct cinema gaze at Peruvian bullfighter Andrés Roca Rey in action at various arenas in Spain. But on a level most Serraesque, it's a brutal watch - two women sitting next to me at the New York Film Festival screening last night left about 40 minutes in ("We just can't take anymore," they apologized but I was more than happy standing up to allow them to leave our row). Digital technology affords Serra the opportunity to hang back and observe the violence unfold in unflinching, unforgiving long takes. The camera focuses so closely on Rey and/or the various bulls that it sometimes feels as if he's performing on a Dune-like sand planet. We hear the crowds (and an occasional ominous score) on the soundtrack but we never see them. These lengthy moments are interspersed with scenes of Rey getting ready in hotel rooms and post-fight car rides in which Serra planted a camera and a light in the vehicle and left the footage up to fate given that there was no room for him in the car. As with his fiction features, he shot hundreds of hours and then spent months editing. 

As an anthropological document, it's fascinating although it grows numbing over 123 minutes, a condition you may welcome. Knowing next to nothing about bullfighting, I learned a great deal, chiefly that bullfighting is a team sport with several handlers/players assisting Rey in vanquishing the bull and extolling his prowess in the car rides after (his huge cojones are celebrated many times). The extreme theatricality, not just of the performance/sport but the preparation as well (jumping into the skintight pants, kissing a rosary, checking for bleeding wounds, etc.), provides added visual/dramatic interest.

But now that I've taken it all in, I'm not sure of the use/replay value of the film. Which is fine because neither does Serra. At the Q&A after the screening, the phrase he used most was "I don't know." He certainly didn't know what footage he would get from the car rides and he explained that he originally intended to follow two bullfighters but decided the other lacked whatever amount of élan. Like all his films, Afternoons of Solitude came alive in the editing and even then, the result feels aleatory and fiercely experimental. His m.o. has its detractors and he doesn't do himself any favors in claiming "I'm the greatest editor in the world" as he did last night. But I can't help but guffaw in pleasure at such an uncompromising, and extraordinarily well-spoken, auteur. After several successive masterpieces, he's made a merely good film. And given that he claims this will be his last documentary ever, I'm excited to see the transcendence he serves up next.

 Grade: A-minus