
Afternoons of Solitude
(Tardes de soledad)
Directed by Albert Serra.
France/Portugal/Spain, 2024, DCP, color, 125 min.
Spanish with English subtitles.
DCP source: Grasshopper Films
France/Portugal/Spain, 2024, DCP, color, 125 min.
Spanish with English subtitles.
DCP source: Grasshopper Films
A cherished project long in the making, Serra’s observational documentary follows, with structural precision, the full length of a traditional corrida fought by Spain’s most celebrated toreador, the Peruvian Andrés Roca Rey. Using almost exclusively close-up cameras and wired microphones that capture the every word and breath of the toreador and the bull alike, Tardes de soledad plunges the viewer into the ring to offer a startling, and ultimately salubrious, response to the woeful trend of contemporary documentary in which ever more “dangerous” and edgy subjects are designed as somehow more real and authentic, a trend partially ascribed, locally, to Harvard’s own Sensory Ethnography Lab.