Tardes de Soledad - Expat Cinema Rotterdam

Filmmaker Albert Serra offers us a hypnotic and intimate look into the bullfight, as bullring king Andrés Roca Rey enters the arena to face the mighty beast. A brutal act of performance, that forces the spectator to look at their own moral compass.

Tauromaquia, possibly one of Europe’s most gruesome and cruel cultural practices is the centre stage for Andrés Roca Rey, toreador and unchallenged diva of the Plazas de Toros. Rey inhabits the arena with the attitude of a king and the agility of an eagle. In front of him, the Bull: majestic and fierce, refuses his inevitable death, and fights with braveness, leaving bare the absurdity of human behavior. Rey’s elegant gowns blind the audience that claps and cheers in awe watching the beast fall.

Rigourous, intense, unrestrained, Albert Serra’s perfect frames lure the spectators out of their comfort zone, taking them close to the star and even closer to the death and decadence that surrounds him. Hypnotic, Tardes de soledad, is a dive into a world of men, where the fragility and loneliness of masculinity tries to conceal itself behind blood and broderies but eventually resurfaces in flatteries and stranded gazes. In Tardes de soledad, once again, beyond the capacity of conveying such an experience with an impeccable style, Serra’s ultimate talent is to leave the spectator alone with their moral compass and ideas. A mark of respect toward the viewer that defines his cinema as one of the most necessary of our times.