About a month ago, I posted  an early, subtitle-free trailer for Miguel Gomes’s “Tabu,” a woozy, wistful black-and-white Portuguese romance that I flipped for in Berlin, and which still stands as my favorite new film of 2012 so far.

Chances are some of you admired the glorious imagery and music of the two-minute taster without a clue as to what it was actually about; happily, a subtitled trailer has now been assembled, and Australian distributor Palace Films has kindly let us have the first crack at it. (They’ll be backing the film’s next international appearance, at the Sydney Film Festival in June.) Adopt Films, meanwhile, has the U.S. right, and has announced a limited release in late December; expect Toronto and perhaps New York fest dates in the fall.

Anyway, take a look after the jump and see if it makes any more sense to you now — though I’d venture that at least half the film’s storytelling lies in its more sensory aspects.

There’s a reasonable chance you’re looking at one of this year’s foreign-language Oscar submissions: the Portuguese selectors entered Gomes’s far more opaquely difficult “Our Beloved Month of August” a few years back, so it seems likely they’d favor this more widely acclaimed (and audience-friendly) effort.

Incidentally, Portugal’s being rather good to me in 2012: in addition to serving up my top film of the year, they’re also hosting me at the IndieLisboa Film Festival at the end of this month. Keep an eye out for some festival reports from sunny Lisbon as an appetizer to May’s Cannes coverage. 

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HoelUhjVXas?rel=0&w=640&h=360]

For more views on movies, awards season and other pursuits, follow @GuyLodge on Twitter. 

Sign up for Instant Alerts from In Contention!