User Reviews

The title Tabu is one that looms large over film history recalling the collaboration of two pillars of silent cinema, F.W. Murnau and Robert J. Flaherty, about a forbidden love story (the film's taboo) between a fisherman and a holy maid, and splits its story between two clear sections titled "Paradise" and "Paradise Lost". In Gomes' film, we begin with a prologue of a Portuguese man's expedition to Mozambique in search of his lover's soul, ending in him being devoured by alligators and being reborn as one, before moving to the first section of the film, titled "Paradise Lost". In it, we follow María, a woman activist who's neighbour with a senile lady with a gambling addiction by the name of Aurora, and her African maid Santa. Aurora is poor and raving madly about her fictitious exploits in Africa and her strange dreams of being raped by apes, all the while being suspicious of Santa, accusing her of voodoo witchcraft. Eventually the woman's health declines rapidly, and as a last wish she asks María to look for a man called Ventura. María eventually finds Ventura but is unable to bring him to Aurora before her death. After the funeral, Ventura joins with María and Santa and begins telling the story of his affair with Aurora (played by the beautiful Ana Moreira), where he confirms she did actually live in Mozambique, and where he tells of his forbidden romance with her while she was pregnant of her husband's baby. Here we begin the section titled "Paradise", detailing the story of their affair and of their Portuguese social circle, back when Mozabique was still a colony, which makes up the larger bulk of the film.

One of the aspects that surprises outright is just how brilliantly Gomes manages to capture this story from an aesthetic point of view. Visually the film is of course emulating an older style of filmmaking, right down to the choice of working in an academic ratio (1.37:1), but his visual style is perhaps less reminiscent of Murnau's, and rather seems to emulate 50s Kenji Mizoguchi and early Satyajit Ray. There is that same remarkably organic, unimposing and ever so elegant kind of black and white photography which is harder and harder to find today (even the first half which is filmed in contemporary Lisbon), all the while the film works with a very limited array of sounds and music providing a background for a story told otherwise entirely through the voice-over of Ventura.

The voice-over eventually leads to many labyrinthine stories regarding the lives of many people he met in Mozambique, not least the members of his own rock n' roll band, specifically Mario to whom Ventura was a sort of right hand man. The stories are all vivid and told with great detail and humour, but essentially they are a smokescreen to what's otherwise a very simple tragedy of forbidden love, beautifully told. In many ways, even through these many decade-spanning branches, the film's narrative closely resembles the works of Gabriel García Márquez. The love story at the heart of it is one forbidden due in large part to the social aspect, that Aurora is a pregnant, married woman, but all throughout the film there's another side suggesting the nature of this affair's forbiddance is also of a divine kind - it is, precisely, taboo. There are many elements of magical realism at play, from the cryptic opening tale to the encounters with witch-doctors and seers, the latter foreboding the tragic end to the affair. Even the location, set around a fictional Mount Tabu, and the attitude adopted by Dandy, Aurora's pet alligator, seem to plot to make their fates meet. There is a strong mystical power at play, one that, like many of Márquez's most classic works, seems to exist as an unholy hybrid between local and European beliefs product of colonization.

Evidently, this affair is doomed from the start. The inversion of the original Tabu titles, leading to an almost sardonic remark over the latter section, allows us to see and know these characters' fate before we see their relationship progress, and thus the development of their relationship is all the more arduous and cathartic.

In the Q&A with Miguel Gomes, he mentioned that he had no ulterior motives to tell this story, no overlapping ideas as he does not consider himself to be a smart man and therefore does not consider his ideas "worthy" enough to sustain a film (perhaps in admitting that he's smarter than a vast majority of the filmmakers in the BAFICI), but instead he concentrates on catching glimpses, moments and developing a story out of them. Effectively this is not a film of big ideas and enlightenment, roughly the overarching themes could be related to adultery and natural law with hints of a cultural clash and the likes, but it's never really about that. It's about creating a story that's affecting like no other, and that he's managed to create. With this, Gomes becomes a cinematic force to be reckoned with, and one I'll be following very closely from now on.

Sometimes I think critics include a movie on their top 10 lists simply because it's the last one they remember seeing. That might be the case with "Tabu," which showed up on more than one list, but isn't nearly as interesting a film as it pretends to be, or as the critics who rave about it seem to think it is.

"Tabu" is full of auteur tricks and cinephile homages. It borrows its name from an obscure FW Murnau silent, it's filmed in black and white and utilizes two different film speeds, and the entire second half has no dialog, only voice-over. But underneath all those tricks is a surprising conventional film. Well, more precisely, two films.

After a brief interlude involving an intrepid explorer, a ghost and a crocodile, Part 1 begins, which is titled "Lost Paradise." It's about three women living in present-day Lisbon -- Pilar, her neighbor Aurora, and Aurora's African caretaker, Santa. Aurora is wildly dramatic, and probably senile. She sneaks away from Santa to gamble away any money she comes across. She corners Pilar one day and shares her fears that Santa is a servant of the devil who has imprisoned her and cast a curse upon them all. Of course the truth is much less dramatic, but Pilar still feels obligated to try and do something for her aging neighbor. And when her health takes a turn for the worse and Aurora asks her only friend to track down a man she once knew, of course Pilar obliges her.

The man's name is Ventura, and he's not very hard to track down. The second half of the film, titled "Paradise," is his recounting of his relationship with Aurora; the entire thing is narrated by him but acted out like something from "Unsolved Mysteries" -- the actors on the screen speak but we never hear their words, only ambient sounds around them. It is an interesting way to portray a memory, to keep us aware that this isn't happening, it's being remembered. But really - an hour of flashback? The contrivance grows old fast, and we never transition out of it into more immediate and direct storytelling.

The memory takes place in Mozambique, back when it was a Portuguese colony. Aurora is the beautiful bored wife of a rich merchant, and Ventura is a rake and a roustabout. He looks an awful lot like pirate Johnny Depp in "Chocolat." Of course this is the kind of guy you should never trust around your women, but Aurora's husband is out of town quite a bit, and there's the matter of a constantly escaping pet crocodile. Pretty soon they are in bed (Aurora and Ventura, not the crocodile) and not long after that they are in love. But she is pregnant, and the baby is her husband's, not her lover's. This is a love story that can only end in tragedy. (Which, of course, we already knew, because this is all being tragically remembered, mind you.)

So essentially, we have two movies -- the two parts are too stylistically different to be considered anything else. The first half is a quiet, borderline boring Euroflick about aging and loneliness. It has a vaguely Almodovarian feel, though there are no transvestites or ghosts, only a cadre of middle-aged women. The second half is more classical, and also more formulaic, reminiscent of sweeping, exotic romances from the golden age of Hollywood without ever approaching that kind of grandeur. (Indeed, it uses pretense to steer clear of that kind of grandeur and emotional intensity. Of it was as overheated and melodramatic as the movies it's emulating, it would probably be unbearably campy.) Both halves are decently made short films -- probably better than average, but I think for "Tabu" to really work, the two halves need to connect on a deeper level than the plot. And that never materializes. I want the two halves to comment on each other, to enrich each other in some way, but it's just not there. So really, all it amounts to is, "hey, you know that crazy old lady next door? She's got a quite a story, set in Africa, about infidelity and murder and crocodiles. Imagine that!"

"In all my films there is an urge for fiction," Mr. Gomes said in an interview with Slate. "There is a first part that begs for another film to appear, and it does because of our common desire." I'd say he's accomplished about half of that goal, twice over. While watching "Tabu," I kept waiting for another film to appear, a more interesting, more subtle and complex, more deeply layered film. But it never does. So I guess I'll move on to the next thing, and keep looking.

I always loved voice-overs in films. Almost as much as I hated all attempts of realism in films.

So called "reality" is the worst kind of delusion. It makes us feel that we have time when in truth there is not time. It binds us to the moment and makes us blind to what it means. A story can reveal tragedy but when you are in the midst of it, in the "reality" of it, you only see that "reality" which makes everything trivial.

That's the magic of the voice-over. You see everything happening as in "reality" but the voice-over pulls you back and the reveals the greater truth, the story.

In this film, this is cleverly utilized. The story is banal for sure but the voice-over reveals that what was conceived as "real" was only a dream. This film stays in the voice-over and shows how most of our talk is just blabber and not necessary to understand what is going on. In the second part of the film, which is the part in which the voice-over takes over, there is no dialogue to be heard and I, as the viewer, could not be more happy about it. The paradise, which is the title of this second half of the film, is, to me, the blessing of not having to hear the blabber. All other sounds are revealed and the director makes a point out of it. These sounds do not disrupt the magic. Only the blabber would do that and bring forth the trivial.

Honestly, the film started out slow and I wasn't sure where it was going in the first part.

The second part cranked up fast and the audience becomes quickly engrossed in Aurora's past and her life in Africa. One completely understands her melancholy and longing for her past when you compare her farm on Mount Tabu to her life in Lisbon.

Aurora's verboten romance with Gian Luca quickly builds up and the audience can feel the longing and how Aurora felt trapped with her pleasant husband.

The saddest part for me was when Gian Luca played the drums to the Ronette's song and his entire demeanor is crushed and devastated.

The film ends satisfactorily although the tragic ending of Gian Luca's romance with Aurora is well... sad and unfortunate.

Miguel Gomes did an excellent job in this film and the actor Carlo Carlotta did wonderfully as did Ana Moreira. Teresa Madruga did great as the audience's eyes and ears.

Lastly, I thoroughly enjoyed the use of black and white cinema for the Africa part of the film. It threw modern Lisbon into relief and made it seem even more drastically different.

Who wants to see a film that's shot in black and white, is slow moving and its second part is like a silent film? If the answer is yes then you will be richly rewarded with Tabu. The Portuguese director Miguel Gomes has made a strange poetic film.

A Portuguese film in two parts "Paradise Lost" and "Paradise." The bizarre short prologue transports us to a strange world where an intrepid explorer mourning a lost love gets eaten by a melancholic crocodile in Africa. The crocodile reappears throughout Tabu and accept for concluding that it represents an ancient old soul looking over the proceedings I'm not sure of its significance. The first part is set in modern Lisbon which appears to be full of bland apartment blocks. It explores the relationship between the kind melancholic Pilar (Teresa Madruga) and her gambling addicted; fading neighbor Aurora (Laura Soveral) who has a tendency to exaggerate and get lost in her vivid imagination Aurora is having problems with her housekeeper Santa (Isabel Cardoso). She believes Santa has turned her daughter against her with her black witchcraft. In between rescuing Aurora from the casino, Pilar goes to the cinema, joins the UN protests and shares time with her romantic painter man friend. The health decline of Aurora triggers the death bed request to see Gian Luca Ventura (Henrique Espírito Santo). Over coffee Gian shares another story of Aurora back in deepest darkest Africa.

We are transported back to another time and the film takes on another feel, romantic and sensual. Gomes referencing Sydney Pollack's epic romance Out of Africa begins the story with the immortal lines, "She had a farm in Africa." This part is without dialogue but features a finely scripted voice-over and the sounds of Africa. This section melodramatic and dreamlike details the doomed love affair between Aurora (Ana Moreira), and the seductive adventurer Gian (Carlota Cotta). Cotta looks and is framed like a silent film star, Moreira more like a star of French cinema of the sixties. In between the all-encompassing romance of the privileged whites the Africans toil away, in the fields, as servants, basically second class citizens. Throughout the film Gomes intentionally positions the whites as the ruling class whilst the blacks struggle to be heard. Yet this is never over emphasized.

Gomes has crafted a film that stays with you. Those moments in time…A solitary tear awkwardly swiped away by the elder Gian recalling the loss of great love, the stony faced Santa eating the prawns given to her by the annoyingly kind Pilar, the first meeting of the young lovers almost unable to hide their attraction for each other, the bizarre performance of the boy band at the pool house. The performers are all excellent and Rui Pocas does a great job with the black and white cinematography.

"Tabu" is a rather odd but beautiful little film that defies easy classification. The first part is a drama about three women in an apartment building in modern day Lisbon. Aurora started off life as a woman of privilege who later marries a well-to-do landowner. The years haven't been kind to her and she seems to be losing her grip on reality. Her daughter employs a woman, Santa, to look after her but otherwise has no contact. Santa hails from a former Portuguese colony and is trying to adapt to western culture. A third woman, Pilar is a concerned neighbor who demonstrates on behalf of social causes. Together the three women represent different ways of coping with Portugal's history. Aurora for whom the past was a kind of golden age; Santa who has chosen to remain in Portugal and adjust to her new world and Pilar who appears to embrace activist political causes perhaps as a way of atoning the past.

The second part is a steamy melodrama that unfolds as a memory sequence involving a young and beautiful Aurora who's stuck in a dull marriage to a rich man in colonial Africa. Later she meets a man and begins a passionate relationship which could threaten both of their futures. There's also a crocodile who first appears in a prologue when it consumes a despondent man whose love has passed away. A crocodile appears again as a gift to Aurora from her husband. That crocodile would haunt Aurora in her later years as if it were an avenger seeking the souls of those who've been unwilling or unable to accept life's lack of concern for our emotional attachments. This idea of the past as perhaps best forgotten is heightened by the callous disregard the younger generation displays for the older.

"Tabu" is not for everyone. Those who gravitate toward plot-driven story lines will be frustrated but if you enjoy a thoughtful, introspective character drama this is a treat.

"The film starts off about a women with a delusional dying neighbour but with over an hour ago we find out the past of this neighbour when she lived in Africa, this second half of the film is what takes down it's grade a bit"

This film seems to be inspired by many films of the past which I will mention later but this film is one of those that will have mixed reactions I believe. The film is split into two parts and part one called Paradise Lost where we met Pilar (Teresa Madruga) a retired women living in Lisbon. Her neighbour Aurora (Laura Soveral) seems to believe in many strange things believing that Pilar is her best friend and must help her before she eventually dies. Once Aurora dies at the funeral Pilar starts to talk to a strange man named Ventura (Henrique Espírito Santo) who knew Aurora when they lived next door to each other in Africa. The second part then starts and it is called Paradise telling the story of Aurora (Ana Moreira) and Ventura (Carloto Cotta) when they were younger including a forbidden love shared between the two but also how that messed up their lives.

The film is shot entirely in black and white but also all the dialogue is Portuguese. I believe that the first part of the film works better because of awkward some of the scenes feel but also of how Aurora, Pilar and Santa are involved in the story. The second part of the film does not work as well for me because of many scenes were there is no sound even if we do see the actors speaking, the only words in this part is a voice-over provided by Henrique Espírito Santo as he explains the story being told on screen. The choice to use black and white I thought was a good choice especially for the second part as it was a flashback we watched and looked like it was filmed on old style film. The story did get confusing for me at times but I couldn't take my eyes off some of the images especially in the second half of the film.

The performances are more needed in the first part of the film because they actually get to speak dialogue. Teresa Madruga playing Pilar is fine but her performance is more of reactionary one as she observes events that are happening around her. Laura Soveral playing the older Aurora in her limited screen time gives the best performance in the film. She just knew how to play this character's descent into madness very well which is why the film is all about her character in the past and in present time.

The film does have it's great moments but because of the failings of the second half to set up as much an interesting story as the first the film. The film does well at surprising me because most of what happens in the film I was not expecting to happen.

MOVIE GRADE: B (MVP: Laura Soveral)

What would "Out of Africa" if shot by Wes Anderson, along with a bipartite alibi borrowed after Murnau's "Taboo", look like? It would like this film.

The quirkiness of the band intruding cinematically here and there on the second part, along with the use of music or the charming, fleeting delineation of the animal profiles on the clouds, testify to Gomes following the steps of Anderson; to what purpose or tenor, apart from some kind of academic camp ("her harmless, soft bipolar disorder" snaps when heard), or the occasional charm (I especially, really liked and appreciated the "monkey business" dream early on the film but the film fails to deliver after the double-entendres implied there), I can not tell. It just feels random rather improvisatory and the cinematography, its posing and sequences, if it scores once, then misfires thrice.

I am also someone that finds voice-over the easy way out, unless when used in manner like say Godard or Marker does, and that means part of the stroke, rather than part of a misty crutch. (When at the end we learn that there in Mario's murder lies the beginning of the war, the film, being overall finicky, cannot have this as camp or sly, but is actually rather lame - those who swoon in a post-post-colonialist way or whatever are out of their depths.)

Carlotto Cotta was by far the most powerful presence in the film his cheeky, soulful and sexy gaze anchor the film whenever he is on screen, yet he can not possibly structure the affair, a really missed one.