Tabu - 2012 - 2 1/2 Stars

Director: Miguel Gomes
Cast: Teresa Madruga, Laura Soveral, Ana Moreira, Henrique Espirito Santo, Carlotto Cotta, Isabel Cardoso

There are structural elements in Tabu which must be talked about. I won't give away key plot points, but there are structural spoilers.

Tabu tells two stories; the story of three elderly women in Lisbon in 2011 and a story narrated by a man named Ventura in 2011 Lisbon. Ventura tells the story of a tryst with one of the aforementioned women and his narration is a constant presence throughout the the second half of the movie, which is titled Paradise. In Paradise Director Miguel Gomes uses many techniques to showcase the haziness of memory; some are well-worn like the use of grainy film, while others are daring, but unnecessarily restrictive; outside of the narration there is almost no audible dialogue in the second half of the film. Eventhough Gomes shows characters speaking the audience can only hear diegetic sounds and music.The decision to not use dialogue, while innovative, hampers the film because it prevents the audience from fully-rendering the main characters in Paradise.

The characters are stock-tpes; our hero is a daring rebel, handsome with long hair and a wispy mustache. The man he cuckolds is a stuffed shirt with short hair cut, a proper appearance that hides his unseemly political motivations. The woman at the center is a free-spirit tomboy who feels repressed by the men in her life. It's too bad the characters are so thinly drawn, because the mise-en-scene and sound design are impeccably constructed throughout. During the climax of the film there are two unforgettable shots, but I found myself more invested in the quality of those shots than the life changing events that befell our leads in those unforgettable shots.

Oral storytelling is a building block of civilization, but it's also an incredibly narcissistic act. It's difficult to consistently duplicate, it's slow and it's told from one perspective. The oral tradition is in many ways more about the singular power given to the storyteller, than the sense of community and history it fosters. In Tatu, Miguel Gomes plays with inherent narcissism of oral storytelling as we regularly see African servants in the periphery of our narrator's grand-tale of unrequited loved. The trials and tribulations of the servants are of actual significance, but they are sidelined so an old man can tell his story about the one that got away. While this is a savvy criticism of western culture, I don't think Gomes is trying to implicate the audience for caring about this affair at the expense of the horrors of colonialism, which makes the ironic distance achieved from the perspective he gives us even more alienating when we the film shifts back to the love story we are supposed to care about. Tabu features a Portugese cover of the Ronnette's classic Be My Baby, which is an excellent metaphor for the film. All the technical brilliance, innovation and craft is still present, but there is something off, which prevents the art from having any emotional resonance.