Tabu (2012) Timeline Explained – Every Event in Order

Aurora shot Mario because he confronted Gian-Luca about their affair and demanded it end. When the heavily pregnant Aurora arrived and saw the confrontation turning violent, she grabbed a revolver and shot Mario in defense of her relationship and potentially her life. The act was fueled by desperation, fear of discovery, and the intense emotional turmoil of her forbidden love affair.

Foreshadowing: The tension between Mario and Gian-Luca earlier established Mario as someone who would not accept the affair quietly.

• aurora
• mario
• shooting
• murder
• affair
• gian-luca

Aurora met Gian-Luca when her pet crocodile escaped from her tea farm and wandered into his house. While searching for the crocodile, the pregnant Aurora discovered it at Gian-Luca's residence, and their encounter sparked a dangerous romantic affair that would shape the rest of their lives.

Foreshadowing: The crocodile gift from Aurora's husband symbolically represented wildness and untamed desire that would eventually lead her beyond her marriage.

• aurora
• gian-luca
• crocodile
• first meeting
• affair

Mario's death became a convenient pretext for Portuguese authorities to escalate military action in Africa. The personal murder was reframed as a political act and used to justify launching the Portuguese Colonial War, effectively folding Aurora's private tragedy into the larger brutal machinery of empire and colonial conflict.

Foreshadowing: The colonial tension already present in 1960s Mount Tabu created the political environment where personal violence could be weaponized.

• mario
• murder
• colonial war
• portugal
• political pretext

Aurora never replied to Gian-Luca when he made contact in Lisbon because she was consumed by guilt over Mario's murder. Her final letter to Gian-Luca pleaded with him to leave Africa and expressed her shame. When he later reached out, she chose silence, possibly believing she didn't deserve closure or fearing reopening old wounds.

Foreshadowing: Aurora's obsessive focus on her past and her sense that someone was missing her foreshadowed the guilt that had defined her life after Africa.

• aurora
• gian-luca
• silence
• guilt
• letters
• contact

Aurora gave birth to a daughter shortly after shooting Mario, in the shadow of the violence surrounding her. The film suggests she kept the child, though the daughter is not present in the Lisbon storyline. The birth marked a split in Aurora's life, between protection of her child and the overwhelming guilt she carried for the murder.

Foreshadowing: Aurora's pregnancy was already advanced during the affair, adding urgency to her decisions and the stakes of keeping the relationship hidden.

• aurora
• daughter
• birth
• child
• pregnancy

Gian-Luca burned Aurora's final letter out of respect for her wishes. The letter contained her confession of guilt for Mario's murder and her plea for him to leave Africa forever. When Gian-Luca later moved to Lisbon and considered responding to her, he chose instead to honor her request for separation by destroying the letter, carrying that burden of silence for decades.

Foreshadowing: The burning of the letter sealed the fate of their relationship, ensuring neither would ever fully know the other's true feelings or regrets.

• gian-luca
• letter
• burning
• guilt
• respect
• aurora

The crocodile serves as a symbolic bridge between the African legend and Aurora's real life. Originally a pet gifted by her husband, its escape leads her to Gian-Luca and the affair. In the legend, a crocodile mourns a woman by the river, mirroring the film's themes of forbidden love, loss, and guilt. The crocodile represents wildness, untamed desire, and the fated connections that shape destinies beyond rational control.

Foreshadowing: The opening legend directly parallels Aurora's story, with the crocodile and woman on the riverbank foreshadowing the real human drama that follows.

• crocodile
• symbolism
• legend
• africa
• desire
• fate

Aurora asked her friend Pilar to find Gian-Luca because she felt his absence throughout her elderly years, a metaphysical sense that someone was missing from her life. Though she died before they could reconnect, her final wish to locate him suggests she wanted closure or one last connection with the man who had defined the most passionate and tragic chapter of her life.

Foreshadowing: Throughout the Lisbon sections, Aurora's eccentric behavior and superstitions hint at deeper unfinished business from her past.

• aurora
• gian-luca
• search
• death
• closure
• pilar

The legend of the explorer who jumps into the river after his beloved's death, only to be devoured by a crocodile, serves as a mythic template for Aurora and Gian-Luca's story. Both involve forbidden love, loss, and a symbolic crocodile that represents the boundary between desire and death. The woman seen with the crocodile in modern times mirrors Aurora herself, a woman bound to a powerful, dangerous force beyond social norms.

Foreshadowing: The legend establishes the film's themes of fate, guilt, and love that transcends death before we even meet the characters.

• legend
• myth
• crocodile
• fate
• connection
• parallel

Gian-Luca fled Africa two days after Mario's murder because the situation had become dangerous and uncontrollable. With Aurora's life at risk and the political situation deteriorating, he made the painful choice to leave for India. This departure was meant to protect Aurora and potentially himself, but it also marked the end of their relationship and began decades of separation.

Foreshadowing: Mario's demand that Gian-Luca end the affair had already created a rift that made staying in Africa untenable for both men.

• gian-luca
• africa
• india
• departure
• flight
• escape

Pilar, Santa, and Aurora form a fragile support circle in Lisbon's present day. Aurora is the eccentric, superstitious pensioner at the center; Santa is her Cape Verdean housemaid with mystical abilities; Pilar is the Catholic activist neighbor who drives their shared projects. Their dynamics blend care, superstition, and loneliness, with Aurora's secret past about Gian-Luca hovering beneath their daily interactions.

Foreshadowing: The women's routines and Aurora's visits to the casino create the ordinary surface that conceals the extraordinary history about to emerge.

• pilar
• santa
• aurora
• lisbon
• relationship
• friendship