Tabu
User Score
6.3 out of 10

Generally favorable reviews- based on 7 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 4 out of 7
  2. Mixed: 2 out of 7
  3. Negative: 1 out of 7

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  1. gonnawatchit
    May 24, 2013
    4
    Sometimes I think critics include a movie on their top 10 lists simply because it's the last one they remember seeing. That might be the case with "Tabu," which showed up on more than one list, but isn't nearly as interesting a film as it pretends to be, or as the critics who rave about it seem to think it is.

    "Tabu" is full of auteur tricks and cinephile homages. It borrows its name fr    om an obscure FW Murnau silent, it's filmed in black and white and utilizes two different film speeds, and the entire second half has no dialogue, only voiceover. But underneath all those tricks is a surprising conventional film. Well, more precisely, two films.

    read more at www.gonnawatchit.com    … Expand

Critic Reviews

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Metascore
78 out of 100

Generally favorable reviews - based on 17 Critics

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 14 out of 17
  2. Mixed: 3 out of 17
  3. Negative: 0 out of 17
  1. Boston Globe
    Reviewed by: Ty Burr
    Feb 15, 2013
    63
    A black-and-white fever dream, and, like all dreams, its meanings are elusive. It’s opaque, maddening, often pretentious, yet the pretensions may be on purpose, to push us away from the adulterous colonials at the story’s center and reveal the Africa they’re too obsessed with each other to see.
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  2. Portland Oregonian
    Reviewed by: Marc Mohan
    Feb 7, 2013
    83
    The black-and-white cinematography and silent-film feel are haunting and nostalgic, and Aurora's story encapsulates a broader, bittersweet truth about the perils of tinted memory.
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  3. Los Angeles Times
    Reviewed by: Betsy Sharkey
    Jan 24, 2013
    50
    At first Tabu is intriguing. But the enigma gets wearing as the director's attention is divided between the homage to the silent film era and the film's underlying exploration of the regret of old age.
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