After watching four different movies from the famed Miguel Gomes, I knew it was about time to watch his most acclaimed work, Tabu.

Like many of Gomes’s works, the film is divided into chapters. The first half, “Paradise Lost”, focuses on three women. Pilar, a socially conscious Catholic, Aurora, an eccentric woman in her late 80s, and Santa, Aurora’s caretaker from Cape Verde. When Aurora is near death, she asks Pilar to reconnect her with an old friend, Gian-Luc Ventura. Unfortunately, Aurora passes before Gian-Luc can visit her. The second half, “Paradise”, is Gian-Luc recounting his relationship with Aurora.

Aurora was a member of the upper class in Portuguese Mozambique during the 1960s, owning a tea farm with her equally socialite husband. Aurora and Gian-Luc were neighbors and lived near the slopes of Mount Tabu. Despite being pregnant with her husband’s child, Aurora and Gian-Luc start a secret affair. The relationship begins to crack during the lead-up to the eventual Portuguese Colonial War, when white settlers start to form militias, and tensions continue to rise. I will not spoil it, but their relationship ends in the most disastrous way possible. None of these scenes has dialogue either; they are narrated only by Gian-Luc.

Like any of Gomes’s films, this story has many layers. For example, why the name Tabu? There is no actual Mount Tabu in Mozambique, and the word “tabu” is a Polynesian word derived from “tapu”. The title Tabu is really a reference to F. W. Murnau’s 1931 film, Tabu: A Story of the South Seas. Murnau’s Tabu is a documentary that combines fictional elements about a romantic couple, Mahati and Reri, in the South Seas. Reri has been declared a sacred maiden and considered “tabu”. In Polynesian society, a tapu is a person, object, or place that is so holy that it cannot be interrupted by human contact. This extreme avoidance of objects and people is where the word “taboo” originates. And certainly, anyone can say that having an extramarital affair with a pregnant woman is a prime example of taboo.

With Reri considered “tabu”, the couple decides to escape from this fate by sailing to another island. They land in a French colony and struggle to integrate into Western society. Matahi is quickly exploited by French merchants and local officials, as Matahi does not understand the concept of money. Eventually, Reri is persuaded to return to Bora Bora, while Matahi drowns when swimming after her.

So, why would Gomes name his work after a fictional documentary set in the South Seas? I believe that Gomes picked a film like Tabu as a visual reference not just for its early-cinema associations, but also for its colonial associations with early documentaries. Many early documentaries (which we may now consider ethnography) were a mixture of documentary and fictional narratives. Films like Tabu and Nanook of the North would hire local natives to perform their everyday routines and rituals while also incorporating a story. These early documentaries are now considered dated, as they featured people from different cultures acting out scenarios that never happened and often exoticizing their culture.

Tabu is not only a beautiful piece of work, but also a great examination of time and memory. Estado Novo and its tight grip on the colonies have been a scar for Portuguese history. It has been a grim legacy that haunts many, just as Aurora and Gian-Luc’s relationship continued to haunt them both into old age.

I have noticed, though, that some recent viewers have been upset with the film regarding the depiction of Portuguese colonialism. Some have accused the film of romanticizing Portugal’s colonels, but I believe they are missing the point. The film is neither a scathing critique nor a glorification of Portugal’s colonialism. Gomes is simply using the colonial period as a chaotic environment for an affair to flourish. While we don’t see the direct abuse and exploitation of Mozambicans by white settlers, we do see the Portuguese mainly partying and drinking, or, as Gian-Luc notes in narration, their hypocrisy, some of their latter drug problems, and mental health issues later after the fall of Estado Novo. With all this drunkenness and the war game playing of the militias, Aurora and Gian-Luc are given space to be intimate with one another and be able to reinvent themselves. Their relationship, though, like the aesthetics of colonialism and fascism, is all just a flashy illusion that hides a grim reality.