Just perfect...

Best movie of this year hands down!

If you like to be scared, if you like to laugh, and if you like to learn a thing or two at the movies, this absolutely cannot be missed.

The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

The director has written 4 books and directed 7 films but this is her first film based on her own book. She said it has been a challenging task for her to direct this film because one has to betray the book while directing its film version. It has been a difficult task for her to cut out many written in her book.In general, it's a well-done film about many unusual relationships: family relationships (including father-daughter, mother-daughter, father-son, mother-son, brother-sister relationships) involved in pedophilia, lesbian relationship, co-cohabiting couple relationship in an adultery, divorced couple relationship in an adultery. Exactly because of such a wide angle about relationships, the core element about victims/survivors of pedophilia has been dealt lightly but conscientiously.Very good acting from the supporting actresses Angela Finocchiaro and Stefania Rocca. The acting of Giovanna Mezzogiorno is less natural. The anxiety she delivers in this film is not that of being in a pedophilia victim-hood, but more of that of her impersonal and emotionless involvement.Two scenes I found unnecessary in the film. One is the (imagined) kissing scene of Emilia and Sabina. Enough evidence has been given (though later) suggesting Emilia is a lesbian, so no need of showing this scene. Another disturbing scene is when Franco was watching Sabina playing with his children. I found it redundant to show the detailed scene of Sabina's conversation with the children.In addition, the plot is well-linked through narrating all correspondences (letters and emails) between the protagonists. A neat idea.

The vaguely titled DON'T TELL is a multi-layered story of repressions and the horrors of family secrets that threaten to explode at any moment -- a movie about pregnancy, both in a literal and figurative sense. With such a premise, this Italian movie should have been titled in English as "The Beast Within the Heart", which would have made more sense as it is what it is about. Sabina (Giovanna Mezzogiorno), a name that brings to mind "The Rape of the Sabines" and to the dark heroine of the same name of Anais Nin's erotic masterpiece "Spy in the House of Love", is the name of the woman at the center of the story. She's a voice-over actress doing some dubbing work for a unnamed movie in which a female jogger gets raped by a sleaze-ball. Little does she know, the screams of help and resistance that she is acting out will become all too real when her decision to have a child suddenly opens the floodgates to dogs that were better off sleeping in their black caves.It becomes clear that in order for Sabina to live a normal life -- if there is such a thing as "normal" -- she will have to face her inner pain instead of stifling it and further alienating herself from her friends and current boyfriend, a soap actor. A trip to the United States where she visits her brother Daniele (Luigi lo Cascio) further discloses not only the source of the pain, but its ramifications, and in a chilling scene, Daniele confesses not only his own trauma, but how he dealt with it, and how it left him a marked man. It's a very naked moment, and one that is in stark contrast to the torrent of emotion that Sabina has been experiencing, and one that leaves her hanging on a thread that threatens to snap at any moment.As an extra touch, and one that doesn't seem to occur in American movies, DON'T TELL gives some its supporting characters their own lives by telling parallel stories that may not be central to the action but at least sheds some info on them. It's a technique that rounds the movie out quite well in parts but becomes rococo on others. It's almost as if director and writer Cristina Comencini loved the characters from her novel of the same name so much she wanted to include all of them in one movie, and while that's okay in an ensemble, this is a drama that focuses on one woman's road to her past, and becomes cinematic filler. It's as if Krysztoff Kieslzowski would have crammed the events of his TROIS COULEURS trilogy into one movie: it would have been too much, even when all three stories are inherently powerful.On the upside of supporting characters, Sabina's gay best friend, Emilia (Stefaina Rocca), lives in isolation and is totally dependent on her due to her blindness. Sabina, however, decides to introduce her to Maria (Alessandra Finocchiaro), a friend and co-worker in the dubbing field, who's been separated from her husband and awakened to her own lesbianism. The scene where Emilia in her blindness reveals Maria's beauty is potent as it's simple and in a single shot, their attraction and seduction looks utterly beautiful. Their own relationship could spawn a movie in its own right, because it goes through its own shades of darkness that mirrors Sabina's, and is self contained. On the downside, Sabina's boyfriend, Franco (Alessio Boni), has a storyline that should have terminated when she leaves to the US, but we continue to see him initiating an affair with another woman. The director of the soap opera where he works also gets more screen time than necessary, and his "comedic" presence is a little jolting to a story that is melodramatic. However, such things are a small complaint, because DON'T TELL (LA BESTIA NEL CUORE) is very moving at times and has a visual climax that brings back the past into the present in a seamless montage of vivid images.

'La Bestia nel cuore' ('The Beast in the Heart' released in the USA as 'Don't Tell') is an intense Italian film written and directed by Cristina Comencini that tackles subject matter so visceral that the telling of it requires complete concentration from the audience in order to feel the power of the impact at the end. It is a tough film to watch because of the story, but it is a superb film to watch because of the excellent cast and production crew.Sabina (Giovanna Mezzogiorno) is introduced to us in a cemetery where she is arranging for the interment of her dead parents: the mood for the story is subtly set. Sabina is a dubbing actress for translating films into Italian, a 'sell-out' acting job compared to the life of her live-in boyfriend Franco (Alessio Boni) who is a stage actor being tempted to accept a role in a TV series which pays more money than the stage. Sabina confesses she wants to get pregnant, she does, and with her pregnancy she begins to have nightmares of shadowy childhood memories. She is afraid to discuss these with Franco, or with her best friend Emilia (Stefania Rocca) who is blind and has been in love with Sabina since childhood. It seems the only person with whom she can confide her secret fears is her brother Daniele (Luigi Lo Cascio) who has moved from Italy to Charlottesville, VA where he is a professor at the University and has a happy family life with wife Anna (Lucy Akhurst) and two children. Sabina flies to the US to be with her brother and in the course of their reunion the two siblings uncover the beasts in their hearts: sexual abuse from their father now departed. How this discovery alters their lives is the dénouement of the film.There are many subplots - infidelity on the part of Franco while Sabina is away, a lesbian relationship that develops between Emilia and another of Sabina's friends Maria (Angela Finocchiaro) - and Comencini draws subtle parallels between these twists along side the main story of incest discovery. Yet without concentration, these subplots can become distracting.The acting is on the highest level and the changing locations are shot by cinematographer Fabio Cianchetti with sensitive respect of the nuances of suggestion encased in each place. The uncredited musical score is an admixture from Robert Schumann's piano sonata to contemporary works and serves to heighten the actions and mood. In Italian with subtitles. A film well worth watching.

Be it Sabina in w-d Cristina Comencini's "La Bestia Nel Cuore" 2005, or Giovanna in w-d Ferzan Ozpetek's "La Finestra Di Fronte" 2003, or Giulia in w-d Gabriele Muccino's "L'Ultimo Bacio" 2001, Italian actress Giovanna Mezzogiorno's portrayals are so complexly simple and 'relishingly' memorable to watch."Don't Tell" may not be for everyone due to the difficult, sensitive subject matter. There were Hollywood or television movies that dealt with this 'beastly' subject, and "Bliss" (1996 from writer-director Lance Young) came to mind. "Bliss" is more frank and direct in dealing with the sexual repression issue (the film is for mature audience.) Here with "Don't Tell" - based on her own novel "The Beast in the heart," co-writer and director Cristina Comencini gave us a more 'insider viewpoint' on this issue of family secrets. Through Sabina's anxieties, reactions to her nightmares, and through her brother Daniele's flashbacks and accounts of his childhood responses to his parents, we could feel the painful memories along with them.But the film is never heavy. Comencini has created for us sketches of life: we get to see Sabina in her everyday life, meeting the people she's with and cares for. Through them, we get the balance of humor in the conversations we eavesdrop vs. the somber subject of Sabina struggling internally with unwanted childhood memories. There is Emilia - a longtime childhood blind friend Sabina helps and visits regularly; Maria - a colleague at her marital crossroads Sabina hangs out and chats with; Franco - Sabina's actor boyfriend she loves and lives with; and through Franco at work on a TV soap series, we meet the lively director Andrea Negri, who somehow adds colorful tenderness to the young (love in, love out) couple of Sabina and Franco."A scar is an indelible mark, but it's not an illness," so Daniele, now married with a loving American wife and father of two sons, said to his sister Sabina. There are painful memories that we cannot erase, but we survive and learn to live anew, going beyond the past vs. wallowing in it. "Don't Tell" is a worthwhile film to experience. Thanks to Rosanna Del Bruno's translation (also on Gabriele Salvatore's "I'm Not Scared" 2003), the subtitles were easy to absorb as we appreciate the wonderful performances all round. For the fans of "The Best of Youth" (aka "La Meglio Gioventu") 2003, both the Carati brothers are featured in this film: Luigi Lo Cascio (Nicola) is Daniele the brother, and Alessio Boni (Matteo) is Franco the boyfriend.