Tabu Reviews

"Tabu" starts with Pilar(Teresa Madruga), a middle aged woman, watching a period piece about a tropical explorer who kills himself after being confonted by a ghost. In real life, she is stood up at the Lisbon airport by a young Polish woman she was hoping to host. That leaves her plenty of time to cope with Aurora(Laura Soveral), her elderly neighbor, after Santa(Isabel Cardoso), Aurora's maid, alerts her to her going to a casino where she promptly loses all of her money before possibly pawning her furs for a return trip. Pilar is in charge because Aurora's grown daughter made only a hasty visit when she returned to Portugal for the holidays to visit her husband's family.

"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.

What was the point of the young Polish girl who stands up Pilar at the airport ?

A movie in three movements which ultimately undermines the audience's engagement with an over-emphasis on technique. The cinematic techniques employed in the third movement, while quite interesting, are distancing. Combined with a rather dispassionate narration in this movement, the result is a movie about a supposedly passionate affair, seen at a distance, about which no one appears to care much; despite what we are told. The black and white cinematography is lovely, and the movie's greatest strength, but sabotaged by digital distribution of only moderate quality which leaves me wishing I could enjoy these lovely images on high quality film.

This movie starts out cute, moves quickly into a questionable notmuchness, before bounding into ridiculous obsolescence and finally petering out on a close-up of the baby crocodile who by the end had become the only character I could stomach. If Jim Jarmusch and Marcel Proust had a love-child it would probably be very confused and as a result he might make this film.

Miguel Gomes' Tabu is a black and white Art Film, but therein lies a highly approachable tragedy of unfulfilled love. Split into a prologue, Part I, and Part II, Tabu's three segments offer disparate but equally heartbreaking tales of doomed romance and the isolated individuals left in their aftermaths. Sparkled with poetic African scenery including tribes of indigenous peoples, and lyrical voiceover, the film recalls the work of Terrence Malick at his most purely sensual. Tabu leaves you saddened with the notion of life's ephemerality, and of loves lost but not forgotten.

"Tabu" starts with Pilar(Teresa Madruga), a middle aged woman, watching a period piece about a tropical explorer who kills himself after being confonted by a ghost. In real life, she is stood up at the Lisbon airport by a young Polish woman she was hoping to host. That leaves her plenty of time to cope with Aurora(Laura Soveral), her elderly neighbor, after Santa(Isabel Cardoso), Aurora's maid, alerts her to her going to a casino where she promptly loses all of her money before possibly pawning her furs for a return trip. Pilar is in charge because Aurora's grown daughter made only a hasty visit when she returned to Portugal for the holidays to visit her husband's family.

"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.

#5 on Tim Brayton's 2012 list

Not for everyone as this is a slow paced film, but not a boring one I'd say. The way the story is built and told and the striking poetics of b&w photography and the unusual narration make this one of the gems of 2012.

Watching this was more like reading a brilliant novel than watching a standardized movie...

Such a great story, great lines and the second part is, simply, stunning. However, it could be stronger if we talk about acting skills.

"Tabu" de Miguel Gomes é um exercício de uma enorme petulancia pseudo-intelectual.Confesso que o trailler me tinha atraído bastante pela fotografia. Julgava que o teatralismo frívolo, tão ao jeito das produções nacionais, já tinha terminado: mas não, aqui está ele em plena força, a raiar, como sempre, o ridículo. Actores medíocres e desempenhos sem técnica nem paixão e onde não se consegue vislumbrar o minímo talento.A narrativa (mais uma vez, tão ao gosto lusitano), completamente desadequada, a debitar um texto que roça parte das vezes o absurdo pelas palavras escolhidas, e dito por quem claramente não nasceu com vocação para narrar.
Em resumo, um exercício de boçalidade intelectualóide sem qualquer nexo e interesse, próprio para críticos apreciadores do estilo "Arte Naif" mas sem arte (e, lá está, os críticos do Público - que não suportam cinema - tinham de adorar esta estopada. Típico.). Escapa a banda sonora, a fotografia(P/B) e a frase:"Tinha um quinta em África, no sopé do...". Espera aí, onde é que já ouvi isto? Deixa ver, traduzido para ingles:"I had a farm in Africa at the foot of...". Poético, só é pena ter sido tirada do filme África Minha" adapatado do livro "Out of Africa" de Karen Blixen.(10/20)

stunning

magnificent

The high critical praise is mystifying. Dull pretension at its worst. Painfully dull, I had to walk out.

A KVIFF viewing, the third feature-length work from Portuguese director Miguel Gomes, which was among the contenders for the Golden Bear in Berlin earlier this year, and wound up winning the FIPRESCI Prize and Alfred Bauer Award.

The film is entirely in Black & White, which has a deceiving anachronism effect and injects an appeasing vigor to enliven the storyline. With being equally divided into two parts, the first half is the contemporary story between a middle-aged woman, Pillar and her senior neighbor Aurora (who is live alone with her black servant Santa, and strongly believes her estranged daughter and Santa are plotting against her); the second half is completely B&W silent, with an elaborate voiceover from Auroraâ(TM)s former lover Ventura, revealing a secret history about he and Auroraâ(TM)s love affair back in Africa half an century ago. It is a distinctively interesting composition, which contributes a pleasant illusion that we were watching a double-feature.

But by comparison, the first part is more austere and compelling while the second part is basically about a superfluously hackneyed liaison between a married woman and a romantic womanizer, the only worthiness is that it is between two white people in Africa, and if one intends to get some in-depth probe about the continent and its people, the film could hardly suffices this curiosity.

Between the female correlation in the first part, Pilar has a manifest momentum to propel the storyline, and ruefully there will not be a third paragraph to recount her story out of the lightly over-hyped second part, her story behind might own more worth to be revisited and explored. Teresa Madruga and Laura Soveral are spellbinding during their screen time, if only the second half could be reinterpreted in another way, the film could have been a fabulous essay about love, aging and mystery behind everyoneâ(TM)s usual representation.