Topping Cahiers du cinéma’s list of best films from 2022, Albert Serra’s mesmerizing epic conjures up the malaise and paranoia poisoning the Edenic calm of sun-soaked Tahiti. Steeped in moral ambiguity, Benoît Magimel’s stunning performance embodies the corruptive power of the imperial state.

Eschewing explanation for rhythmic abstraction, this authentically mysterious documentary poses profound riddles about beauty, violence, and mortality. In the death-baiting, cherubically handsome bullfighter Andrés Roca Rey, acclaimed director Albert Serra finds a welter of enigmatic contradictions.

From Don Quixote to Louis XIV, Albert Serra is notorious for radically reimagining the costume drama, but little will prepare you for this. A gorgeous tableau of the nocturnal cruising and sexual fantasies of desperate aristocrats, its confrontational form challenges cinematic vulgarity and excess.