Andrés Roca Rey in Afternoons of SolitudeALBERT SERRA: AFTERNOONS OF SOLITUDE (2024 - NEW YORK FILM FESTIVAL SPOTLIGHT SECTION)Serra doubles downTRAILERFRENCH TRAILERCatalan filmmaker Albert Serra, who is now 49, has drawn special interest from the start for his distinctively slow, dreamy fictions, particularly
The Story of My Death[/i (2013), a meeting of Casanova and Count Dracula,
The Death of Louis XIV (2016), starring Jean-Pierre Léaud, and most of all
Pacifiction (2022), a long, haunting dream of colonialism and deception that won Benoît Magimel his second of two Best Actor Cesars in a single year for his lead performance.
In the new
Afternoons of Solitude/Tardes de solidad Serra turns to documentary with a dreamy, disturbing, brilliantly intensive study of Spanish bullfighting focused on Andrés Roca Rey. It is beautiful, relentless, haunting, and intimate portrait of this fearless and enigmatic young star of the bull ring from Peru, who now is the toast of the
corrida de toros in Spain.
It has not been much reviewed yet but response has been strongly positive. In
Variety Guy Lodge wrote "This is a major work from a richly maturing filmmaker." He said it is "of a piece with his recent fiction features in its use of languid repetition and sensory saturation to pull the audience into something approaching a discomfiting dream state." David Romney in
Screen Daily wrote "Its immersive intensity makes it essential viewing for Serra followers, and for anyone interested in documentary’s ability to record, and make us think about, the extremes of the real world." (See also Hayley Drake in
Loud and Clear.)
By way of qualification, David Katz in
The Film Stage wrote "In the interest of reservation: this isn’t Serra’s most intellectually interesting film, making it less fulfilling than his others, though it achieves the most directness of intention and rhetorical clarity of his work so far, continuing from
Pacifiction in displaying how naturally his method and interests fit depicting the modern world."
Apart from essential sequences in which Roca Rey is seen being dressed and undressed and taken to and from the ring, all the sequences for two hours are of his performances in the ring. He is repeatedly gored and each time gets back up and continues. The essence of the film are the passes with the muleta, his ritual movements closer and closer to the charging bull. Perhaps the intensity of this experience may wane slightly toward the end of the two hours, but for the first half hour the viewer is singularly alone with the fear and and danger of this death defying ritual sport. This is what Serra achieves. And the sensuality of the massive animal, his horns, and the suits of light, the beautiful, tight outfits of the
torero and his crew, the red of the cape, dazzle and satisfy the eye and mind.
For those who think bullfighting is a savage spectacle of blood, an archaic ritual that should be done away with, Serra has no answer unless it is in what some think is an excessive repetitiousness of Roca Rey's bravery and the bulls' dance of death.
Afternoons of Solitude/Tardes de soledad, 125 mins., debuted at San Sebastiàn Sept. 23, 2024, winning the top prize, the Conchade Oro, also showing at the New York Film Festival in the Spotlights section, where it was screened for this review. An HBO documentary.
VIDEO of Roca Rey in the bull ring (not from the film)
Video,
"Peruvian Andrès Roca Rey, an idol in Spain" (Spanish)
Showtimes
Thursday, October 3
8:45 PMStandby Only
Friday, October 4
9:00 PMStandby Only
Friday, October 11
3:45 PMStandby OnlyTV story says he is friends with Spanish royalty, moves in a world of celebrities, lives on a
finca in Andalusia with horses and bulls, and is "cute, flirtatious, and fun to be with."
Video of Roca Rey (not from the film) 
Andrés Roca Rey in Afternoons of Solitude
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