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Don't Tell

2005, Movie, NR, 120 mins

Don't Tell: Review

DON'T TELL | LA BESTIA NEL CUORE
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Repressed memories return with a vengeance in Italian writer-director Cristina Comencini's adaptation of her own novel La Bestia nel Cuore. Although memories of a childhood spent with her late parents remain dim, Sabina (Giovanna Mezzogiorno), a voice-dubber for Italian TV shows, has a disturbing nightmare involving her father, a severe but kindly high-school teacher. It doesn't take Carl Jung to interpret Sabina's dream: She sees herself as a child, taken from her bed by a man in pajamas and brought into her parents' bedroom. In order to better come to terms with what she suspects was a history of sexual abuse at the hands of her father — memories which she has long repressed — Sabina decides to leave Rome and spend the Christmas holidays with her older brother, Daniele (Luigi Lo Cascio), a university professor who now lives in the United States with his wife (Lucy Akhurst) and their two young sons. But just before leaving, an increasingly distraught Sabina picks a fight with her live-in boyfriend, Franco (Alessio Boni), a "serious" stage actor who's now working on a cheesy medical TV series, and tells him that like most men, he'll probably cheat on her while she's gone. She also leaves Emilia (Stefania Rocca), a childhood friend who leans heavily on Sabina ever since she lost her sight, in the care of her coworker, Maria (Angela Finocchiaro). The companionship might do both women some good: Emilia has been in love with Sabina since childhood and spends all of her time in her dark, depressing apartment pining for what she can't have, while Maria is still reeling from the fact that her middle-aged husband left her for one of their teenage daughter's friends. Once Sabina arrives in Charlottesville, she soon discovers that Daniele has something of his own to share with her. Comencini cuts back and forth between Sabina's past and her journey to America, between Franco's seduction by a young actress and Maria's growing attraction to Emilia, and what soon starts to feel like an Oxygen made-for-cable melodrama ends with a handful of platitudes about reclaiming one's past and emotional scars. It's swiftly paced and never dull, but the heavy-handed symbolism comes fast and thick: Sabina's memories begin to surface after she arranges to have her parents' remains exhumed and transferred to another grave site; Franco's and Sabina's vocations represent people's ability to wear masks and use different voices; and surely all those boomerangs are meant to remind us all of what happens to memories that are tossed away rather than confronted head-on. leave a comment --Ken Fox
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