Tabu (2012)
Average Rating: 7.7/10
Reviews Counted: 49
Fresh: 42 | Rotten: 7
No consensus yet.
Average Rating: 7.1/10
Critic Reviews: 14
Fresh: 11 | Rotten: 3
No consensus yet.
liked it
Average Rating: 3.8/5
User Ratings: 1,240
My Rating
Movie Info
Acclaimed director Miguel Gomes returns with a sumptuous, eccentric two-part tale centered on Aurora, shown first as an impulsive, cantankerous elderly woman in present-day Lisbon. When Aurora is hospitalized, she sends her neighbor, Pilar, to pass word of her grave condition to Gian Luca, a man of which no one has ever heard her speak. Pilar's quest to fulfill her friend's wish transports us to Africa fifty years earlier, before the start of the Portuguese Colonial War. We see Aurora again,
Dec 26, 2012 Limited
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Cast
-
Teresa Madruga
Pilar -
Laura Soveral
Old Aurora -
Ana Moreira
Young Aurora -
Henrique Espírito Santo
Old Ventura
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Tabu Trailer & Photos
All Critics (49) | Top Critics (14) | Fresh (42) | Rotten (7)
It takes a while to get to the meat of the movie, but it's well worth the wait.
Top CriticIt almost seems a parody of willfully obscure art-house fare. Yet it has an undertow that sucks you in as often as it strands you back on shore.
A kind of jigsaw puzzle, spiced up with references to "White Mischief," "Out of Africa" and "The Snows of Kilimanjaro," that will frustrate some audiences and fascinate others.
The audience is left to imagine much of the story, though it is clear it involves love, betrayal, guilt, regret and a recurring crocodile.
Portuguese director Miguel Gomes' latest film moves through different styles and eras, and proves that shooting in black and white is as versatile as it ever was.
Few films are this smart about subtly couching their allegorical aspirations within more straightforward narratives; fewer still are able to do so with such energetically inventive virtuoso style.
It's far-from-enthralling.
While the path through this unconventional film is not always obvious, it is a sensuous, mysterious and intoxicating path worth taking.
This beguiling and eerie tale of illicit romance and nostalgia for lost love is one for the patient and the adventurous.
If you are still awake after the first hour of this challenging and often off-putting film from Miguel Gomez, you may find unexpected ethereal rewards in the second half, when a curious, dialogue-free narrative transports us into another realm
Every so often a film comes along that recharges your love of cinema. Miguel Gomes' Tabu is just that gem: a film of such artistry and daring that you'll be left dazzled by the possibilities of the medium.
The latter part of the film recalls 1987's "White Mischief," but in Gomes's hands, the story becomes much more...the past and the present continually flow into one another...
The black-and-white cinematography and silent-film feel are haunting and nostalgic, and Aurora's story encapsulates a broader, bittersweet truth about the perils of tinted memory.
For a decades-spanning, country-hopping romance on a low budget, "Tabu" looks great...it intentionally evokes in aesthetics, settings and/or plot elements such cinematic classics as "Casablanca," "The Postman Always Rings Twice" (1946) and more.
The influences of Murnau's 1931 black-and-white Tabu are more thematic than stylistic in this uncategorizable new film
If in the first half Gomes dares the audience to be bored, the second half is a cinephile's payoff.
Patient viewers will find some rewards with a quirky and charming film that develops a wealth of emotional depth.
A dreadfully slow screenplay in the second half undercuts the interesting handling of black and white exposition.
Audience Reviews for Tabu
Super Reviewer
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Foreign Titles
- Tabu - Eine Geschichte von Liebe und Schuld (DE)
- Tabou (FR)
"Tabu" is a beguiling allegory about how Portugal deals, or does not deal with, its colonial past, as the past seems insistent on returning to haunt the present. For example, Aurora is not merely going senile but becoming her younger self again.(That might explain a crocodile making an appearance in both the prologue and the second half. Or maybe the director just likes crocodiles.) By contrast, Santa and Pilar seem intent on breaking such a cycle; Santa by reading 'Robinson Crusoe' while Pilar takes up various forms of activism. As time moves day by day in the present and by the month in the past, both have a lovely colorless dreamlike intensity while the past has sound effects, musical numbers but no dialogue. At least in Portugal, they take down their Christmas decorations in a timely fashion.