Perhaps the hardest film to describe since “The Turin Horse” is Miguel Gomes’ allusive, languorous and entrancing “Tabu,” filmed in 16mm black-and-white and told in two halves, the first in contemporary Lisbon and the second in colonial Mozambique. We first meet Dona Aurora late in life, an ornery woman given to gambling sprees who believes her lifelong maid, Santa, secretly practices witchcraft against her. (Slow-acting curse.) Her kindly neighbor, Dona Pilar, wants to help her, but doesn’t know how, until Aurora asks her to summon a man, Gian Luca Ventura, whose name she’s never before mentioned.
