Movie Taboo 1980

Taboo (original Swedish title: Tabu) is the final installment in Swedish director Vilgot Sjöman’s unofficial “sex trilogy,” following I Am Curious (Yellow) (1967) and I Am Curious (Blue) (1968). Released in 1980, the film arrives over a decade after the height of the sexual revolution. Rather than continuing the euphoric, documentary-style erotic exploration of his earlier work, Taboo is a stark, self-reflexive, and melancholic drama about a woman who enacts a total surrender of sexual control—a “taboo” even within the liberated climate of its time. The film straddles art-house eroticism, psychological case study, and meta-cinematic critique. It is notable for starring real-life porn star and feminist performance artist Chrissy (Kerstin) Hellman, foregrounding the blurred line between performer and character, authenticity and exploitation.

(Note: Taboo contains unsimulated heterosexual sex acts, including penetration and fellatio. This was part of the art-house porn wave of the late 1970s-early 1980s in Europe.) movie taboo 1980

The film centers on a brilliant, restless male dancer (a composite figure inspired by Nijinsky and other artists) whose uncompromising genius strains his relationships and sanity. It tracks his rise in avant-garde ballet, his tempestuous affairs, and the mounting social and institutional pressures that clash with his radical artistry and sexuality. Interwoven are vignettes that dramatize repressed desires, ritualized sexual encounters, and hallucinatory visions that collapse time and place—portraying the protagonist’s inner life as a landscape of taboos he both worships and is consumed by. Taboo (original Swedish title: Tabu ) is the