''Tabu'' is a 2012 Portuguese
drama film
In film and television, drama is a category or genre of narrative fiction (or semi-fiction) intended to be more serious than humorous in tone. The drama of this kind is usually qualified with additional terms that specify its particular ...
co-written and directed by
Miguel Gomes. It stars
Teresa Madruga,
Laura Soveral,
Ana Moreira
Ana Moreira (born 13 February 1980) is a Portuguese actress. She has appeared in more than 20 films since 1997. She starred in ''The Mutants (film), The Mutants'', which was screened in the Un Certain Regard section at the 1998 Cannes Film Festiv ...
and
Carloto Cotta. The first part of ''Tabu''s plot depicts a socially conscious woman and the final days of her neighbour, an elderly woman named Aurora. The second is a flashback to a year in Aurora's life in 1960s Portuguese Africa. The film's title references
F. W. Murnau's
1931 silent film.
''Tabu'' premiered on 14 February 2012 at the
62nd Berlin International Film Festival,
where it won the
Alfred Bauer Award and the International Federation of Film Critics (
FIPRESCI
The International Federation of Film Critics (FIPRESCI, short for ''Fédération Internationale de la Presse Cinématographique'') is an association of national organizations of professional film critics and film journalists from around the wor ...
) prize.
It won the Grand Prix at the 2012 edition of
Film Fest Gent
Film Fest Gent, also known as International Film Fest Gent, is an annual international film festival in Ghent, Belgium. The festival held its first edition in 1974, under the name Internationaal Filmgebeuren Gent, and has since grown into the la ...
. Critically acclaimed, ''Tabu'' has been ranked among the best films of the year and the decade.
Plot
;Prologue
A narrator, Miguel Gomes himself, reads in voiceover a poetic and philosophical text that invokes a legend in which the Creator orders, but the heart commands: the suicide of an intrepid explorer who, somewhere in Africa, long ago, jumps into a river after the death of his lover and is devoured by a crocodile. Many swear they have seen a sad crocodile and a woman dressed in old-time clothes on the riverbank and that the two share a mysterious empathy.
;Part 1—Paradise Lost
Three disparate women live in an old building in Lisbon. Aurora, an octogenarian living off her pension, eccentric, talkative and superstitious, and Santa, her housemaid from Cape Verde, live in the same apartment. Santa is semi-literate, but proficient in the divinatory art of
voodoo. Pilar, their neighbor and friend, middle-aged, Catholic, and a militant social benefactor, involves herself in their lives.
Pilar has another friend, a romantic painter in love, a gentleman who insists on offering her tacky pieces of art. But Pilar is more concerned with Aurora: with Aurora's solitude, with her frequent trips to the casino. She is even more worried about Santa, with her long silences and foreboding presence. Santa thinks it better to take care of oneself without annoying others, so she keeps quiet.
Something else concerns Aurora: understanding she will die soon, she feels someone is missing her, someone her friends have never heard about: Gian-Luca Ventura. So she asks Pilar to find him. She succeeds in doing so, but not long after receives word that Aurora has died. Gian-Luca is an old man, who lived in Mozambique, a former Portuguese colony. Another story emerges, beginning: "Aurora had a farm in Africa at the foothill of Mount Tabu..."
;Part 2—Paradise
Gian-Luca, in voiceover, narrates the story of Aurora's life in 1960s Portuguese Africa. Aurora and her husband live together on their tea farm on the slopes of Mount Tabu. She is a skilled hunter, never missing a shot. She owns a small crocodile, a gift from her husband, which she keeps as a pet.
One day, the animal runs away. The pregnant Aurora finds it in Ventura's house, where they consummate their existing mutual attraction; a passionate and dangerous love affair ensues. Gian-Luca confides in his friend, Mario, about the affair. Mario demands that Gian-Luca end the affair and when he is ignored, the two start fighting. The heavily pregnant Aurora picks up a revolver and shoots and kills Mario. She later gives birth to a girl. Two days later, Gian-Luca leaves Africa for good. Mario's killing is used as pretext to ignite the
Portuguese Colonial War
The Portuguese Colonial War (), also known in Portugal as the Overseas War () or in the Portuguese Empire, former colonies as the War of Liberation (), and also known as the Angolan War of Independence, Angolan, Guinea-Bissau War of Independence ...
.
Cast
*
Teresa Madruga as Pilar
*
Laura Soveral as Old Aurora
*
Ana Moreira
Ana Moreira (born 13 February 1980) is a Portuguese actress. She has appeared in more than 20 films since 1997. She starred in ''The Mutants (film), The Mutants'', which was screened in the Un Certain Regard section at the 1998 Cannes Film Festiv ...
as Young Aurora
* Henrique Espírito Santo as Old Ventura
*
Carloto Cotta as Young Ventura
* Isabel Muñoz Cardoso as Santa
*
Ivo Müller as Aurora's Husband
* Manuel Mesquita as Mário
*
Miguel Gomes as Narrator
Reception
''Tabu'' is the Portuguese film with the widest international distribution as of 2012 and the fifth from Portugal to be commercially released in New York (
Film Forum
The Film Forum is a nonprofit movie theater at 209 West Houston Street in Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City. It is a four-screen cinema open 365 days a year, with up to 250,000 annual admissions, nearly 500 seats, 60 employees, over ...
, December 2012), after ''
The Art of Amalia'' by
Bruno de Almeida (2000,
Quad Cinema), ''
O Fantasma'' by
João Pedro Rodrigues (2003,
IFC Center
IFC Center is an art house movie theater in Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City. Located at 323 Sixth Avenue (Avenue of the Americas) at West 3rd Street, it was formerly the Waverly Theater, an art house movie theater. IFC Center is ...
) and, in 2011, ''
The Strange Case of Angelica'' by
Manoel de Oliveira
Manoel Cândido Pinto de Oliveira (; 11 December 1908 – 2 April 2015) was a Portuguese film director and screenwriter born in Cedofeita, Porto. He first began making films in 1927, when he and some friends attempted to make a film about Wor ...
(IFC Center) and ''Mists'' by Ricardo Costa (
Quad Cinema).
Critical reception
Critic
Peter Bradshaw
Peter Nicholas Bradshaw (born 19 June 1962) is a British writer and film critic. He has been chief film critic at ''The Guardian'' since 1999, and is a contributing editor at ''Esquire'' magazine.
Early life and education
Bradshaw was educat ...
of ''
The Guardian
''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in Manchester in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'' and changed its name in 1959, followed by a move to London. Along with its sister paper, ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardi ...
'' awarded ''Tabu'' four out of five, and called the film "a gem: gentle, eccentric, possessed of a distinctive sort of innocence—and also charming and funny". But in his review of ''Tabu'', ''
New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...
'' critic
A. O. Scott
Anthony Oliver Scott (born July 10, 1966) is an American journalist and cultural critic, known for his film and literary criticism. After starting his career at ''The New York Review of Books'', '' Variety'', and ''Slate'', he began writing film ...
faults the director for glossing over the issues of colonialism in the film in favor of simple aestheticism. "Unlike other recent European films (like
Philippe Falardeau’s ''Congorama'' and
Claire Denis
Claire Denis (; ; born 21 April 1946) is a French film director and screenwriter. Her feature film '' Beau Travail'' (1999) has been called one of the greatest films of the 1990s and of all time. Her work has dealt with themes of colonial and p ...
’s ''White Material''), ''Tabu'' views colonialism as an aesthetic opportunity rather than a political or moral problem," wrote Scott. "It is full of longing—hedged, self-conscious, but palpable all the same—for a vanished way of life, in contrast to which contemporary reality seems drab and numb." This view was not shared by ''
The New Yorker
''The New Yorker'' is an American magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. It was founded on February 21, 1925, by Harold Ross and his wife Jane Grant, a reporter for ''The New York T ...
s critic
Richard Brody
Richard Brody (born January 22, 1958) is an American film critic, filmmaker and author.
Background
Brody grew up in Roslyn, New York. He is Jewish and has personally identified as an atheist. Brody attended Princeton University, receiving a B ...
, who wrote, "Gomes sees the predatory injustices of colonial life as a sort of Wild West of anarchic self-indulgence and self-reinvention . . . Nothing suggests nostalgia for or ambivalence about Portugal's colonial empire." Brody called ''Tabu'' "one of the most original and inventive—as well as trenchantly political and painfully romantic—movies of recent years".
On
review aggregator
A review aggregator is a system that collects reviews and ratings of products and services, such as films, books, video games, music, software, hardware, or cars. This system then stores the reviews to be used for supporting a website where user ...
website
Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is an American review aggregator, review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee ...
, the film has an approval rating of 88% based on 60 reviews, and an average rating of 7.9/10. The website’s consensus reads: "Mysterious and visually striking, ''Tabu'' rewards audiences' patience with a swooning romance shot with experimental flair". On
Metacritic
Metacritic is an American website that aggregates reviews of films, television shows, music albums, video games, and formerly books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created ...
, the film has a weighted average score of 78 out of 100, based on 17 critics.
Sight & Sound
''Sight and Sound'' (formerly written ''Sight & Sound'') is a monthly film magazine published by the British Film Institute (BFI). Since 1952, it has conducted the well-known decennial ''Sight and Sound'' Poll of the Greatest Films of All Time. ...
film magazine listed it at number two on its list of best films of 2012. In 2016, the film was ranked among
the 100 greatest films since 2000 in an international poll of 177 critics.
See also
*
List of black-and-white films produced since 1970
References
External links
*
*
{{Authority control
2012 drama films
2012 films
Portuguese drama films
Portuguese independent films
2010s Portuguese-language films
Portuguese black-and-white films
Films directed by Miguel Gomes
Golden Globes (Portugal) winners
2012 independent films
Films shot in Portugal
Sophia Award winners
Portuguese-language drama films