Festival du Nouveau Cinéma ’12: ‘Tabu’ an exquisitely-cut gem, and perhaps the best film of the year
Tabu
Directed by Miguel Gomes
Written by Miguel Gomes
Portugal, 2012
With his third feature, Portuguese critic-turned-auteur Miguel Gomes has proven himself to be a director in complete control of his craft. Tabu is a film of artistic cool – breaking classic genre conventions in the most crafty and affectionate way by consistently subverting the narrative in a beautiful dreamlike style. The film is divided into two parts: The first section is set in modern day Lisbon and titled Paradise Lost. It follows Aurora, an elderly cranky woman who spends her last days suffering from paranoia and the emotional burden of a troubled past. The second section, titled Paradise, is set in Mozambique in the 1960s, and tells the story of her uncontrollable and obsessive relationship with a man named Venturo, deep in the jungles of Africa. These two chapters are preceded by an enigmatic prologue, which turns out to be a...
Directed by Miguel Gomes
Written by Miguel Gomes
Portugal, 2012
With his third feature, Portuguese critic-turned-auteur Miguel Gomes has proven himself to be a director in complete control of his craft. Tabu is a film of artistic cool – breaking classic genre conventions in the most crafty and affectionate way by consistently subverting the narrative in a beautiful dreamlike style. The film is divided into two parts: The first section is set in modern day Lisbon and titled Paradise Lost. It follows Aurora, an elderly cranky woman who spends her last days suffering from paranoia and the emotional burden of a troubled past. The second section, titled Paradise, is set in Mozambique in the 1960s, and tells the story of her uncontrollable and obsessive relationship with a man named Venturo, deep in the jungles of Africa. These two chapters are preceded by an enigmatic prologue, which turns out to be a...
- 10/9/2012
- by Ricky
- SoundOnSight
As I mentioned in the preface to the first part of my Wavelengths preview (the one focusing on the short films), there are significant changes afoot in 2012. Until last year, the festival had a section known as Visions, which was the primary home for formally challenging cinema that nevertheless conformed to the basic tenets of arthouse and/or “festival” cinema (actors, scripting, 70+minute running time, and, once upon a time, 35mm presentation). This year, Wavelengths is both its former self, and it also contains the sort of work that Visions most likely would have housed. While in some respects this can seem to result in a kind of split personality for the section, it also means that Wavelengths, which has often been described as a sort of “festival within the festival,” has moved front and center. Films that would’ve occupied single slots in the older avant-Wavelengths model, like the...
- 9/12/2012
- MUBI
An elegant, Africa-set melodrama isn't just for cinephiles
The latest feature from Portuguese auteur Miguel Gomes might look like a forbidding cinemathèque-type item. Actually, it's a gem: gentle, eccentric, possessed of a distinctive sort of innocence – and also charming and funny. Gomes has here something of Manoel de Oliveira's slightly stately deportment, and this is the kind of modern-day mystery of Lisbon that would might have interested the late Raúl Ruiz. There is plenty of deadpan wit and fun, and Gomes has Kaurismäki's love of musical interludes, bringing on a guitar band and just letting them play.
There are two parts, or three if you count the enigmatic prologue introducing us to a certain mysterious crocodile, which may or may not turn out to be the emblem or reincarnation of anguished love. In modern-day Lisbon, a devout middle-aged Catholic woman Pilar (Teresa Madruga) is concerned about her elderly neighbour,...
The latest feature from Portuguese auteur Miguel Gomes might look like a forbidding cinemathèque-type item. Actually, it's a gem: gentle, eccentric, possessed of a distinctive sort of innocence – and also charming and funny. Gomes has here something of Manoel de Oliveira's slightly stately deportment, and this is the kind of modern-day mystery of Lisbon that would might have interested the late Raúl Ruiz. There is plenty of deadpan wit and fun, and Gomes has Kaurismäki's love of musical interludes, bringing on a guitar band and just letting them play.
There are two parts, or three if you count the enigmatic prologue introducing us to a certain mysterious crocodile, which may or may not turn out to be the emblem or reincarnation of anguished love. In modern-day Lisbon, a devout middle-aged Catholic woman Pilar (Teresa Madruga) is concerned about her elderly neighbour,...
- 9/6/2012
- by Peter Bradshaw
- The Guardian - Film News
As festival-goers everywhere race to publish their various ‘Best of the Fest’ lists and reviews, readers will do doubt notice a trend beginning to emerge as the majority of these articles make considerable room for Miguel Gomes’ Portuguese epic, Tabu. Mine, perhaps controversially, most definitely will not.
Spread over two parts, the first, “Paradise Lost”, follows the lives of three women over the course of several months: elderly gambling addict Aurora (Laura Soveral), no-nonsense housekeeper Santa (Isabel Cardoso), and lonely landlord Pilar (Teresa Madruga), who is stood up by a deceitful prospective tenant. When Aurora takes ill and requests the presence of a previously private acquaintance, the women track down Gian Luca Ventura (Henrique Espírito Santo) and drive him to the hospital at which the elderly woman is currently admitted. Along the way, he regales his escorts with the story of his and Portuguese heiress Aurora’s (played in flashback by Ana Moreira) first meeting,...
Spread over two parts, the first, “Paradise Lost”, follows the lives of three women over the course of several months: elderly gambling addict Aurora (Laura Soveral), no-nonsense housekeeper Santa (Isabel Cardoso), and lonely landlord Pilar (Teresa Madruga), who is stood up by a deceitful prospective tenant. When Aurora takes ill and requests the presence of a previously private acquaintance, the women track down Gian Luca Ventura (Henrique Espírito Santo) and drive him to the hospital at which the elderly woman is currently admitted. Along the way, he regales his escorts with the story of his and Portuguese heiress Aurora’s (played in flashback by Ana Moreira) first meeting,...
- 7/4/2012
- by Steven Neish
- HeyUGuys.co.uk
In 2009, the best film in Competition at the Berlinale was Maren Ade's Everyone Else (Fwiw, it came away with 1.5 Silver Bears, the 1 for Best Actress Birgit Minichmayr, the .5 for tying with Adrián Biniez's Gigante for the Jury Grand Prix; the Golden Bear that year went to Claudia Llosa's The Milk of Sorrow). Three years on (!), the trio that made Everyone Else worth talking up to this day (see, for example, Kevin B Lee's new video essay on a key scene at Fandor; see, too, Mike D'Angelo on the same scene a year ago at the Av Club) is back in Competition, albeit in three different films. Lars Eidinger has drawn the shortest straw, taking on the lead in Hans-Christian Schmid's rather dismal Home for the Weekend. Minichmayr's fared better opposite Jürgen Vogel in Matthias Glasner's new film, though I seriously doubt many of us will...
- 2/18/2012
- MUBI
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