Kailansorac Clever, believable, and super fun to watch. It totally has replay value.

WillSushyMedia This movie was so-so. It had it's moments, but wasn't the greatest.

TrueHello Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

Catherina If you're interested in the topic at hand, you should just watch it and judge yourself because the reviews have gone very biased by people that didn't even watch it and just hate (or love) the creator. I liked it, it was well written, narrated, and directed and it was about a topic that interests me.

jotix100 Sabina is a woman who seems to have it all: a job she loves, a nice boyfriend, and a great apartment. Yet, Sabina is carrying a heavy burden in her heart. It all comes to a head when she has to make a decision about the death of her parents, as we witness at the start of the film. All the bottled emotions are struggling to come out as she decides to spend Christmas with her brother Daniele in America. She wants to see her older sibling in order to make sense of her past and get closure with a horrible past.Sabina's boyfriend Franco, an actor, is selected to be in a soap opera. Being a theater actor, he is not completely satisfied with the idea, but being realistic, he has to compromise. Sabina, in parting, asks Franco not to see other women while she is away, knowing well the way things are in the world where Franco moves.Instead of being a joyous reunion, both siblings show a restraint in the way the visit develops. Daniele, who is a professor at an American university, plays the tour guide, pointing different aspects of the place he now calls home, but he never mentions anything about his own childhood. It takes a while for Daniele to open up to Sabina because she wants to get to the bottom of the secret that has damaged them both for life. Both, it turns out, are the victims of family sexual abuse by their father, an ugly situation perpetuated by the mother, who knowing about it, prefers to keep it hidden. When the truth comes out, we watch in horror scenes from both siblings childhood.Cristina Comencini, the author of the novel in which this film is based, adapted and directed with sure hand. She is the daughter of the distinguished Italian director Luigi Comencini. She has learned well as she sets her story with great precision, creating characters that one can relate to.The best thing in the film is the work of Giovanna Mezzogiorno. She brings life into Sabina, something that with another actress might not have been as easy. Ms. Mezzogiorno is simply splendid because she makes us care for this wounded woman who is searching for closure in understanding what was done to her at an early age. Equally excellent are Alessio Boni, who appears as Franco, the boyfriend, and Luigi LoCascio makes an impression as Daniele. Both these actors continue to surprise.

m_ats Seeing the poor cinematographic qualities of this movie, I pondered for a while whether it was intentional or not for the director to make this movie look like a soap opera. Given that Franco, in the movie, is a soap opera comedian, and he has discussions with his director about theatre and cinema vs TV.I thought there was some kind of clever smart-ass postmodern metaphor about the movie itself, to it. And I kept watching, and watching.. and .. no.. it never came.It really just is a cheap movie that looks and feels like a very bland soap opera.

nycritic 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.

johno-21 Congratulations on this film being one of the five nominated by the Academy Awards for best Foreign Language Film. I saw this at the 2006 Palm Springs International Film Festival and I ranked it #5 of the 35 films I saw. This is a very good film with excellent acting with a strong cast and some very strong and interesting story characters. Great leading actress with a splendid supporting cast. Emilia, Maria and the director are three very interesting characters that really bring the film together. I would be interested in reading Cristina Comenici's novel if it is available in English translation. I would also recommend her film "La Bestia Nel Cuore" ("Don't Tell" English language title which should actually translate to the Beast in the Heart) and give it a 8.5 out of a possible 10.