Lisbon, Portugal, 2010. Pilar, a pious woman devoted to social causes, maintains a peculiar relationship with her neighbor Aurora, a temperamental old woman obsessed with gambling who lives tormented by a mysterious past.
Cinematography
Grainy black-and-white Africa flashback is pure visual longing.
Direction
Gomes splits the film like a broken heart: silence, then song.
Sound
That Phil Spector wall of sound over colonial tragedy? Unforgivably perfect.
Director
Miguel Gomes
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
The crocodile was real and not always cooperative; its scenes took three weeks to film.
The title references F.W. Murnau's 1931 'Tabu: A Story of the South Seas,' another tale of forbidden love and colonial gaze.
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