Tabú

A retired, religious woman Pilar (Teresa Madruga) endeavours to assist her sensitive, enigmatic and fidgety neighbour Aurora (Laura Soveral) whose both psychological and physical health is growing gradually worse and worse. Once Aurora dies, Pilar and Aurora's maid set off in search for a certain man named Ventura (Henrique Espírito Santo) who appears to be a bond between the presence and Aurora's shady past…

This unorthodox tribute to silent cinema and F. W. Murnau's Tabu from 1931 is atypical even by art-house standards and despite being relatively flawed, it succeeds in overcoming its foibles by its sheer eccentricity and stunning cinematography. The movie is initiated with an outlandish prologue recounting a separate story about a suicide of an explorer devoid of hope for a better future which is entailed by his wife's demise. This prelude constitutes the introduction to this black-and-white motion picture whose general theme is about incapability of leading life without love. The flick proceeds to the first part called Paradise Lost which is about superstitious Aurora's struggles with her paranoid temperament and loneliness on account of being stranded by her ungrateful daughter. At this point, mise-en-scène by Gomes is invariably baffling. This is the weakest part of the film which is extortionately digressive and, apart from the main subject tackled in the ensemble, inauspiciously attempts to encompass such issues as metaphysic, depression of senile citizens in the modern society, passion for cinema as well as faith. As a consequence, it is not much of anything and by briefly alluding to these matters, the atypical drama leaves us with a sense of insufficiency, superficiality and instead of plunging into the major topic, it virtually mummifies the entire concept. Nevertheless, the scatter-brained aspect does not perplex that much and the instant the plot drags, the auxiliary visuals come in handy and prevent the material from becoming lifeless.

Once Tabu transmutes into a strand of flashbacks derived from Ventura's memory (a part called Paradise), it embarks on being uncannily engrossing and bounteously asserts its aesthetic beauteousness by exposing landscapes of Portugal colonies with its eye-pleasing black-and-white photography. Narrated with an assistance of Ventura's voice-over, the pic acquires an exceptionally poetic and contemplative relish and genuinely resembles a piece of silent cinema. This is likewise the moment in which one might discern the evident sway of aforementioned Murnau's opus and the parallels between both works are decidedly far from coincidental. It is not that Gomes endeavours to counterfeit Murnau's classic, but the afterthought conveyed from the perspective of colonisers and not a native collective is analogous by commenting on the inability to fulfil one's love owing to social convenances. The creation of Gomes reverberates some relations from Portuguese Colonial War, but Gomes seems to be uninterested in delving in this phenomenon and prefers to frame waterfalls and majestically picturesque plantations. Notwithstanding, the glossy, sumptuous appearance does not conceal the fact that Tabu is rather a pure stylistic exercise than a very prosperous psychological or political depiction of occurrences transpiring on the screen and the narrator just roughly indicates a development regarding his relationship with Aurora in his psyche. It is the extravagant stylisation and the offbeat, non-linear composition which renders the décor appealing and the entire movie jolly palatable.

The acting is very dexterous throughout the utter film. Teresa Madruga is plausible as a middle-aged prude who craves to console Aurora who is also well played by Laura Soveral. The remainder of the cast is highly enjoyable as well, but there were instants in which some performers felt slightly stiff and somewhat somnolent. Cinematography by Rui Poças is exceedingly ravishing and its tranquil nature captivates the audience from the onset to the very end and its sweetness and subtle charm works symbiotically with some delicate piano riffs which embellish and endow Tabu with several exultations.

Whilst the flick is acclaimed and highly rated by majority of film critics, I am inclined to believe that this abundant, structurally unusual motion picture serves its purpose and delivers a great deal of fabulous shots, but I am far from stating that it is a flawless, timeless and sublime trove. Indubitably, there are some ingenious aesthetic touches, but what Tabu lacked for me was the textural integrity, insightfulness as well as some concretism.

Memories of the past do not always tell us about people and events as they actually were, but often are a mixture of truth and illusion. Portuguese director Miguel Gomes' third feature Tabu takes us on a nostalgic journey that begins in the modern city of today's Lisbon and travels to colonial Africa fifty years ago to attempt to recapture in memory the paradise that was lost. Shot in black and white by cinematographer Rui Poças and using 16mm film rather than color to establish a time differential, the film reminds us of the romantic movies Hollywood used to make in the 1930s and owes a debt to F.W. Murnau, whose title was borrowed from his 1931 South Seas adventure.

Divided into two parts, Tabu's first section depicts an elderly woman, a dreamer beset by remorse and regret, who is fast losing her grip on reality. The second is the story of an obsessive love set in the shadows of a fictional Mount Tabu in Africa. It is a moving story of love and loss, silent except for a voice-over narration, the ambient sounds of nature, and the music of Phil Spector and others from the sixties. The film begins with an enigmatic prologue in which an explorer, distraught over the death of his wife, decides to end his life by swimming with the crocodiles, an allegorical reptile used as a recurring motif throughout the film. The scene then shifts to Lisbon where Aurora (Laura Soveral), an elderly victim of an unknown troubled past, is now close to the end of her days.

She lives with Santa (Isabel Muñoz Cardoso), her maid from Cape Verde who fills her own days by reading Robinson Crusoe at the local book club. Though Santa caters to her every need, Aurora is convinced that she is a sorceress who is putting a spell on her. Having lost her money at the casinos, Aurora looks to her estranged daughter living in Canada and her neighbor, Pilar ((Teresa Madruga), a staunch Catholic and social activist for financial help but little is forthcoming. When Aurora is taken to the hospital, she talks about the only time she truly felt loved, the time when she met a playboy and adventurer on her husband's colonial estate back in the sixties.

Aurora asks Pilar to find her friend, Gian Luca (Henrique Espírito Santo) and have him come to her one last time, but she dies before he is found in a nursing home. Using material from diaries and private letters to establish its credibility, Ventura tells his story to Pilar and Santa over a cup of coffee. It is a personal engaging and deeply felt and is related with poetic insight, told from his point of view. Shifting back fifty years, we see a young Aurora (Ana Moreira), an heiress who has inherited a farm from her father. Surrounded by doting black servants, she is married to a wealthy merchant (Ivo Muller) and pregnant with his child, but her life will change forever when she meets Gian Luca Ventura (Carloto Cotta), a member of her husband's friend Mario's (Manuel Mesquita) rock band and begins a stormy, furtive love affair that will begin and end many times but in the emotions it engenders, it will last a lifetime.

Their story is dramatized in the context of a native rebellion, the beginning of the decolonization process that began in 1961 and continued for more than ten years. Though Gomes glosses over these events and shunts them to the background, the film's depiction of the white adventurers tells us all we need to know about the colonial mentality. At its core, however, Tabu is not a film about history or even about big ideas but an old-fashioned love story that, while perhaps never quite penetrating below the surface of its characters, captivates with its mood, physical beauty, and sense of dream-like mystery. It is a wistful and haunting film about the day when all that is left are memories, dreams, and an overriding longing for an imagined paradise. To Gian Carlo, as to all, in Proust's words, "It comes so soon, the moment when there is nothing left to wait for."

A safari hunter drifts across the starched heat of the African plains, stealthily prowling amongst the tall grass, the scorching shimmering sunlight falls upon the shadows of predatorial lions, hungry hippos and the gleaming jaws of the crocodile. A vinyl recording of 60s rock 'n' roll echoing over time through generations suggest a nostalgic remembrance of a distant land, which later plays a greater significance in a saga of unrequited love, regret and (literally) life and death.

Initially, Tabu is a love story in disguise, a unfinished love story sprawling over a lifetime of passion, regret, duty and propriety. In it's latter stages it contemplates ideas of memory, unrequited love, ageing, class inequality, prejudice, and European colonialism in African hills and plains.

The first part follows the life of an enigmatic elderly woman in contemporary Portugal - titled Paradise Lost - as she goes about her daily life, we learn snippets about her about her prosaic hobbies, simple pleasures, prejudices, idiosyncrasies, detests, and regrets over a sobering simple lifestyle, a long way from the dream life she idolised. Her simple pleasures have allowed her to gamble away her savings and her estranged family by doing so; in her current state, she had little left except her dedicated maid and carer Pilar who initially acts as the audience's eyes and ears into the portrait of a solitary woman.

What is the intriguing background to this lady's prime of beauty and youth? The modern landscape of metropolitan Lisbon, Portugal is industrial, bleak and sobering, at times sad and efficient, a far world from that which she inhabited in her youth. It is not long until what find out the origins of her melancholy and frustration, and what exactly has been trying to atone for most of her later life.

So begins a tale in colonial Africa, a tale of love and betrayal, rock 'n' roll, diamonds, and an alligator. This second part, subtitled Paradise is almost silent with only diegetic sound imposed during key moments with no title cards as far as I can remember. It is a wonderfully romantic and nostalgic yet with an undercurrent on living the edge of a precipice - the dangerous beasts of the African plains, the wild unfamiliar natives and rugged landscape - there exists a sense of tragedy combined with high passion, regret and wild party impulses.

Whereas part one is melancholic as it is bitter and comic, the second part contrasts the beauty of youth, the blinding African heat and sun, it exposes the storytelling medium the by abandoning almost all dialogue and all but some diegetic sound effects. The compositions and framing are gorgeous, a simple story of unrequited love requiring little explanation and is suggested by moods, looks, and atmosphere and nostalgic memories. The economy in telling a story almost wordlessly, embraces the feelings and mood of silent storytelling placing the onus of eliciting emotion on the charismatic and effortless performances. From the frustrating, fussy and capricious Aurora to the charismatic, carefree, jeunesse Ventura and the supporting jaunty characters, each signify the contrasts in class, social status and the colonial class system soon to collapse under political revolution.

What is essentially an unrequited love story /melodrama is a charismatic and rollicking passionate ride with some crystal sharp compositions in textured black and white. This is an impressive, technically creative, charismatic, heartbreaking, melancholic and nostalgic film; perhaps more daring and arguably less conventional than that other lauded silent film of last year. Tabu is gorgeously unpredictable, surprising and artful.

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 voice-over from Aurora's former lover Ventura, revealing a secret history about he and Aurora'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 everyone's usual representation.

I watched Tabu knowing very little about it and found the film a real treat to watch, but however I will try to avoid giving too much away as this is one of those films that are best to watch not knowing too much. The whole viewing experience is very rewarding, not just emotionally, but also in that your required patience is amply rewarded. Though the entire film is shot in black and white, the two different stories are told in differing stylistic ways, making Tabu a very fitting tribute to cinema itself.

The first half, firstly being set in the present day, has almost a surrealist feel to it, with some apparently random moments and new characters being introduced suddenly. This does require your attention and anyone could be forgiven for wondering where the hell the film is going. However, as the first half reaches its inevitable conclusion and we enter the second half, this is where Tabu becomes an engaging and emotionally rewarding film. Many of the supposedly random moments of the first half now fit in perfectly as we are revealed what happened when Aurora was a young woman living in Africa.

The second half is a rather simple story of an illicit love affair that could never be but is told in an emotionally powerful way, enhanced by the framed narrative structure and deeply mournful narration of who we discover to be the man she loved. The power of the voice over is enhanced by the completely different stylistic approach of the second half, the only dialogue throughout is the voice over of Aurora's lover and the whole second half is shot in 16mm. The poignant reflections of the narrator can easily be interpreted as also being the director's and perhaps us the viewer's feelings towards silent era cinema of a bygone age. This stylistic approach is very much purposeful, all other diagetic sounds can be heard, and the characters are physically talking to each other. The emotional power is only enhanced by the fact all we can hear is the non-diagetic narration and having to otherwise rely on expressions and body language of the characters. Part two feels like a two sided approach to love of the past; a past loved one and a love of cinema of the past.

Despite the main subject of the story at hand, Tabu is not a completely bleak film, the playful use of different cinematic techniques and music are a joy to watch and the catharsis of the ending leaves a feeling of poignancy but not abject misery. There are however elements to Tabu that may frustrate. It feels that the protagonist of part one is Pilar, Aurora's neighbour and her story does feel frustratingly unfinished as we see elements of her daily life that make us truly care about her as these moments have literally nothing to do with Aurora. However, this is the story of Aurora through the eyes of those around her and in that case the stylistic approach of part one in retrospect fits with that of part two. The surrealist and playful approach to narrative structure in part one may seem pretentious and potentially alienating to some, but after watching the entire film I could only look back at it with positive feelings.

Original and unique, Tabu is a thoroughly engrossing and emotionally rewarding story that serves not only as a tribute to human love, but also love of the history of cinema. The first thirty minutes or so may feel hard work at first, but what the remainder of the film has to offer more than amply rewards the viewer's patience.