Product Details

• Actors: Giovanna Mezzogiorno, Luigi Lo Cascio, Alessio Boni, Stefania Rocca, Angela Finocchiaro
• Directors: Cristina Comencini
• Writers: Cristina Comencini, Francesca Marciano, Giulia Calenda
• Producers: Fabio Conversi, Giovannella Zannoni, Giovanni Stabilini, Jacqueline Quella
• Format: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Language: Italian (Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo)
• Subtitles: English, Spanish
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
  
• Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Rated: R (Restricted)
• Studio: Lions Gate
• DVD Release Date: August 15, 2006
• Run Time: 120 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B000FUF6SQ
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #97,333 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)
• For more information about "Don't Tell" visit the Internet Movie Database (IMDb)

Editorial Reviews

From The New Yorker

Several of Italy's top young actors populate this Italian drama about the lingering, paralyzing effects of repressed memory. Sabina, played by the beautiful, liquid-eyed Giovanna Mezzogiorno, is troubled by anxieties she can't explain and tormented by enigmatic nightmares about her childhood. She can't speak of her fears to her adoring and equally beautiful actor boyfriend (Alessio Boni) or to her smitten childhood friend Emilia (the glum, reed-thin Stefania Rocca), so she reaches out to her brother (Luigi Lo Cascio), a university professor in the U.S. whose remoteness is well suited to his chosen home: the forbidding, obsessively neoclassical Charlottesville, Virginia. Cristina Comencini, who wrote and directed the film, may overdo the drama at times, but this excess is made up for by the richness of the performances and Comencini's imaginative way of making locations seem pregnant with meaning. In Italian.
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker

Product Description

The nightmares begin as soon as sabina finalizes her fathers funeral. With both parents gone sabina & her brother reconnect & discover their nightmares are shared..& lifes intimacies are now met with fear & trepidation. When sabina & her boyfriend are surpised with news about their future sabina must face her past Studio: Lions Gate Home Ent. Release Date: 09/09/2008 Starring: Giovanna Mezzogiorno Stefania Rocca Run time: 120 minutes Rating: R

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Damages of Suppression, August 19, 2006

By 

Grady Harp (Los Angeles, CA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Don't Tell (DVD)

'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. Grady Harp, August 06

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Italian Cinema At It's Best, June 30, 2009

By 

Michael C. Smith "[e-mail]" (San Francisco, CA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Don't Tell (DVD)

Who say's Italian cinema is dead? With such films as "The Best of Youth", "Bread and Tulips", this marvelous film. "Don't Tell". The Italian cinema is alive and thriving more so now than it has since the fading of the masters Fellini, De Seca, and Visconti.
Film is the only great art from of the United States. We have no other artistic history that we can call truly ours. In Italy there is a great history of art and literature that is original, groundbreaking and innovative. Italian cinema as more in common with American film than it does with the rest of Europe. The Epic was born in Italy with "Quo Vadis" in 1913 and the advancements of the Italians influenced D.W. Griffith and others in burgeoning Hollywood.
American films were loved in Italy pre 1939 and after the war as well. Each country has devoured the other's film product with gusto and learned in the process what great cinema could be. The two cultures influence and shaped each other's new art of the 20th century. Operatic, melodrama, and grand sweeping emotions are at the core a staple of both cinemas. So what does this have to do with "Don't Tell" you may wonder?
This brilliant film is bi-national, in that it is set both in Italy and the United States. It has a sense of blending of the two cultures and there differences as well in doing so it shows an Italian point of view of America. It is a great and revealing thing to see the USA from a European perspective. This jumped off the screen for me and added a deeper layer to the film
The story is indeed deeply moving and the film's cast does remarkable work in the telling of the story of repressed memory and what happens when it is awakened. Of particular note are Giovanna Mezzogiorno, Alessio Boni , and Luigi Lo Cassio (These two actors played the brothers in the incredible "The Best Of Youth" and it is a treat to see them again working together.) The film is richly presented with some wonderful cinematography. A film I highly recommend to lovers of Italian cinema.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Sins of the Father, June 23, 2010

By 

Randy Keehn (Williston, ND United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Don't Tell (DVD)

"Don't Tell" is another "Best Foreign Language" Oscar nominee that I took a chance on solely on it's nomination. I wasn't sure what I was getting into but the film was doing alright setting up the characters and their relation to each other. There were a couple of comic-relief characters who, oddly enough, worked themselves in very well in this drama of the unspeakable. Our main character was depicted as an unflappable person who goes with the flow. In time, however, a nightmare leaves her vulnerable and uncertain. An interesting aspect of this film is who nearly everyone has issues with anxieties and self-esteem.

The only way for our heroine to deal with her fears and clouded memories were to visit her one soul-mate in the nightmare; her brother in America. This enables the plot to thicken and for her friends back home to develop their own subplots. The reliving of the past was both tramatic and theraputic for the siblings and the manner in which they reluctantly revealed their memories was well done, I thought. In fact, I kept thinking how the direstor, Cristina Comencina, was giving us the reactions rather than the actions. It minimized the suspense and brutality but it gave us a look at the real tragedy of such abominations. There was a lot of brokenness at the end but also enough support to leave us with hope.