“Don’t Tell” is an ironic movie title for me, given my own
activism and the title of my books (“Do Ask, Do Tell”), but actually it is the
assigned English title for a 2005 film originally called “The Beast in the
Heart” (“La bestia nel cuore”), by Cristina Comencini, based on her own novel. It’s nice to be able to make a your own film
from your own book. I’d like to do that.
A young woman Sabina (Giovanna Mezzogiomo), happily married
in Italy to Franco (Allesio Boni) starts having nightmares about her childhood
when she becomes pregnant by him. She
travels to Charlottesville, VA where her brother is a professor, to explore the
mystery, and discovers a horrible family secret of abuse by their father. The brother showed he could protect his sisters -- unchosen family responsibility.
The film shows a lot of the real University
of Virginia campus, including the graduate student living quarters.
The film has a climactic sequence where Sabina goes into
labor when alone in a rail tram car. I
wondered, if I had been the only other passenger in the car, could I have done
anything but what she does, pull the emergency lever. Remember that in “Days of our Lives”, a gay
character Sonny steps up to such a challenge and delivers Gabi’s baby when they
are on the run from pursuers in the woods.
There is also a subplot with another lesbian sister.
I had been to Charlottesville today, and by coincidence I
played the Netflix DVD when I got back, but I had no idea that some of the film
had been shot there.
This is a large, ambitious Italian film distributed by
Lionsgate, which in more recent years has not distributed foreign language
films. The music score is interesting,
with a theme by Satie, and an excerpt from Robert Schumann’s Piano Sonata #1 in
F# Minor.
This is a slow-paced film, and it runs a full two hours. It played at many European film festivals, including Venice.
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