For anyone looking for an ethical statement on bullfighting, this is not that film. Composed primarily of a series of corrida at which Peruvian star matador Andrés Roca Rey performs, this is an extremely tough watch for those with any kind of sympathy for animal rights. Director Albert Serra – lauded for his 2022 thriller Pacifiction – is not especially interested in the lives of the bulls, who all die desultory deaths, depicted with horrible intimacy here. What is even more shocking is the abuse and contempt heaped on them by the toreros. “Go join your fucking mother cow,” says one to a convulsing victim.
Rather, Afternoons of Solitude is an unblinking look at bullfighting and the surrounding culture of bravado and machismo, expertly shot and edited with a sense of ritualistic order imbibed directly from the sport. Filming Rey in transit in a people carrier, getting apparelled in his hyper-camp getup, rehearsing his mannerisms in a lift, Serra is fundamentally interested in questions of performance and style. In the arena, he documents the finesse and attitude with which the matador confronts, corrals and quells the raw force of nature. In the ring, Rey has an extraordinary repertoire of gestures: preening head tosses straight from a Whitesnake gig; a glowering demon kill-mask out of kabuki theatre.
Rey’s entourage praises the “truthfulness” of his mises à mort – but how much existential beauty can really be present in this theatre of cruelty and meaningless slaughter? There’s something almost insecure about the nonstop stream of compliments Rey’s entourage lavish on him. But then in one match-up, Rey first goes under the hooves, and afterwards is rammed repeatedly against the sideboards; both times he stands to face the bull once more. It’s hard not to feel an ancient pulse quickening.
Deeply caught up in decoding this tradition, perhaps Serra is too beholden to it. If only this admittedly riveting examination of dark human compulsions had found a way to also articulate the perspectives of the animals for whom the arena is a lethal experience.
• Afternoons of Solitude is at the ICA, London, from 5 September.
