Tabu Reviews

It's far-from-enthralling.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5

While the path through this unconventional film is not always obvious, it is a sensuous, mysterious and intoxicating path worth taking.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5

This beguiling and eerie tale of illicit romance and nostalgia for lost love is one for the patient and the adventurous.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5

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

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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.

Full Review | Original Score: 4.5/5

It takes a while to get to the meat of the movie, but it's well worth the wait.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4

It 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.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4

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...

Full Review | Original Score: B+

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.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4

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.

Full Review | Original Score: B+

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.

Full Review | Original Score: B

The influences of Murnau's 1931 black-and-white Tabu are more thematic than stylistic in this uncategorizable new film

Full Review | Original Score: 7

The audience is left to imagine much of the story, though it is clear it involves love, betrayal, guilt, regret and a recurring crocodile.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5

If in the first half Gomes dares the audience to be bored, the second half is a cinephile's payoff.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4

Patient viewers will find some rewards with a quirky and charming film that develops a wealth of emotional depth.

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A dreadfully slow screenplay in the second half undercuts the interesting handling of black and white exposition.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/10

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.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4

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.

Full Review | Original Score: 9.5/10

If you have the patience to watch this film develop and unfold, like some bizarre night-blooming orchid, what you'll see is not just the last movie released in 2012, but possibly the most original of them all.

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A lyrical Old Hollywood melodrama projected on a bedsheet? A celluloid curio à la Barnum's Fiji mermaid? At such times, it's better to stick with a simple "wonderful."

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