Tabu Reviews

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

It's far-from-enthralling.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5

Its artfulness seems like an alibi, an excuse for keeping the ugliness of history out of the picture.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5

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

Full Review | Original Score: 5/10

There are times when you feel the whole thing is better listened to than watched.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5

Churlish though it sounds, you'll want to arrive for this b&w Portuguese drama about 45 minutes late.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5

Naively simplistic in its narrative, opaque in its politics, the movie's appeal is hard to understand.

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Tabu begs us not to forget the once beautiful, dramatic, and adventurous wilds of youth that are extinguished in the depressingly inevitable isolation of old age.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5

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

The pangs of romance, eroticism, anguish, and longing (both for the stolen moments of private passion and for the sense-making schematics of Empire) transcend any period of cinema Tabu may evoke.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/4

For all its cleverly shot post- modernity, Tabu inadvertently argues for the power of old-school storytelling.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5

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

Does the plot make sense? Probably, but that doesn't really matter. Tabu is about memories and fantasies and folklores, and since when have any of them been consistent with truth or logic.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5

This blend of tongue-in-cheek exoticism and desire so strong it makes crocodiles melancholic amply rewards your patience.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5

Shot in black and white, it's occasionally perverse (a dialogue-free section feels like a gauntlet thrown down to cinephiles) but also lushly romantic.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5

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

Elegantly weaving together colonial history, past cinema and personal memories, it unashamedly touches the heart, the most complicated muscle of the human anatomy.

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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

Tabu is a rare work that manages to draw on the past while creating something that feels very modern indeed.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5

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