Tabu (2012 film)
| Tabu | |
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Film poster
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| Directed by | Miguel Gomes |
| Produced by | Sandro Aguilar Luís Urbano |
| Written by | Miguel Gomes Mariana Ricardo |
| Starring | Teresa Madruga |
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Production
company |
O Som e a Fúria
Komplizen Film Gullane Shellac Sud |
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Release date
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Running time
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118 minutes |
| Country | Portugal Germany Brazil France |
| Language | Portuguese |
Tabu is a 2012 Portuguese independent black-and-white drama film directed by Miguel Gomes, the title of which references F. W. Murnau's silent film of the same name, Tabu.
The film competed at the 62nd Berlin International Film Festival, where it won the Alfred Bauer Award (Silver Bear for a feature film that opens new perspectives) and The International Federation of Film Critics (FIPRESCI) prizes.
A narrator, Miguel Gomes himself, reads in voice-over 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, plunges into a turbid river after a frustrated love affair and is devoured by a crocodile. Many swear they have seen a beautiful woman and a sad crocodile on the riverbank and that the two share a mysterious empathy.
Three disparate women dwell in an old building in Lisbon. Aurora, an octogenarian living off her pension, eccentric, talkative and superstitious, seeming more dead than alive, and Santa, her housemaid from Cape Verde, live at the same apartment. Santa is semi-literate, but proficient in the divinatory art of voodoo. Pilar, their neighbor and friend, a Catholic middle-aged woman, and militant social benefactor, involves herself in their psychodramas.
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 escapes to the casino. She is even more worried about Santa, with her long silences and devil arts. Santa thinks it better to take care of oneself without annoying others, so keeps quiet.
Something else concerns the old lady: 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 and the man appears. He is an old colonist, a disturbed man, from Mozambique, an ancient Portuguese colony. Another story emerges, beginning: "Aurora had a farm in Africa at the foothill of Mount Tabu..."
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Wikipedia