“The life of bullfighter Andrés Roca Rey over the course of a bullfighting day, from the moment he gets dressed to the moment he undresses.” From its synopsis alone, Afternoons of Solitude proposes a textbook exercise in observational documentary: the camera records the preparation, the movements, the spectacle of the bullfight and its conclusion, which involves the death of the bull and the subsequent cheers from the crowd. The filmmaker does not intervene in the action: his gaze —under the illusion of objectivity that the witness-camera generates— seeps into what is shown, how it is shown, and also in what is left out.

However, this exercise implies a deception: in the year of our Lord 2024, making a documentary that exhibits —with a precise telephoto lens and very few cuts— a spectacle that culminates in the violent death of an animal is, from the outset, a provocation. Albert Serra knows this and cleverly hides behind the mode of observation to blur his fingerprints. In short: he throws the stone and hides his hand.

Is Afternoons of Solitude, then, just a reactionary act executed with the highest virtuosity? I believe it is a bit more than that. On the one hand, the obvious: Serra shows us a spectacle in the only way cinema can show it — with unbearable closeness, from a point of view no spectator in the arena could ever adopt. We see the sweat, the blood, and the sand of a deadly dance between bull and matador. It doesn’t matter what moral judgment we bring to the theater: when the bull charges, we flinch. Serra knows this —and in a way, he tames us too.

Identification and disidentification, admiration and disgust, honor and cruelty: through his phlegmatic camera, Serra swings us between violent opposites. As the film progresses and we grow accustomed to Roca Rey, we begin to see his figure mirrored in that of the filmmaker: proud, pedantic, skillful. Also distant: during van rides, his team boasts and flatters him. They praise the size of his balls —the ultimate symbol of his prowess, both as an artist and as a man. Roca Rey remains mostly silent, asks for water, and occasionally murmurs that he’s been lucky. He is the only one who stares death in the face in every performance. The only one brave —or foolish— enough to risk and save his life each time. The only one who offers himself as a sacrifice, entrusting his fate to the Virgin (whose images he treasures), to test whether he still deserves to be saved.

Afternoons of Solitude is a film about coexisting contradictions, and two more are worth noting: that of an ancient aesthetic imagination colliding with a hyper-technological modernity, and that of a performance of virility soaked in homoeroticism. In his room at the Ritz, Andrés Roca Rey pulls on tight pink stockings, his bare chest adorned only with a pearl necklace. His assistant enters, embraces him, and helps him into a pair of tight, gold-embroidered pants that cling to his legs and buttocks. They leave the room together and wait for the elevator. As the numbers ascend on the display, the stark contrast between their outfits —one in suit and tie, the other in the stiff costume of the bullfighter— draws a smile from us.

The film ends just as we expect it to: after confronting a particularly fierce bull (at least, that’s how Serra builds it), Roca Rey strikes it down with remarkable precision. The beast collapses, the matador cuts off its ears and presents them to the deafening applause of the crowd. Roca Rey salutes, the bull is dragged out of the arena, and the film ends. The applause continues, but the crowd is never shown. That final shot —which would close the film with greater academic precision— is withheld from us: the crowd is us, and we are no better for having paid a movie ticket instead of one for the actual bullfight. Serra dazzles with his command of mise-en-scène, exposes us to the most extreme cruelty, asks whether there’s still any sacrificial value in it, and ultimately abandons us in the empty arena, soaked in sweat and blood, applauding ourselves for something we don’t entirely believe we deserve.