SPOILER alert: this review of Don't Tell does tell. If you prefer not to know the secret of Sabina, skip the second paragraph.

 

Home-grown Italian cinema has always had its fair share of crowd-pleasing melodramas that could very well have been made for television, and are often co-produced by the "Cinema" arm of state broadcaster RAI. They rarely export very well but often reap prizes and box-office loot at home. A quintessential example of this type of film is the latest work from writer-director Christina Comencini: La bestia nel cuore (literally The Beast in the Heart, but the international title is Don’t Tell), again co-produced by Rai Cinema. The film, which is based on the homonymous novel also by Comencini, stars a trinity of stars from previously successful melodramas: Giovanna Mezzogiorno (who earlier headlined Ozpetek's award-winning  La finestra di fronte/Facing Window) and the two brothers of the much-praised (but unloved by me) TV mini-series La meglio gioventù (The Best of Youth): Alessio Boni and Luigi Lo Cascio.

 

La bestia nel cuore starts promisingly enough with lingering shots of a luxuriously decorated interior that is gathering dust and conceals a secret; the stolen childhood of Sabina (Mezzogiorno), who was abused by her father. Her parents are now dead and Sabina is about to become a mother herself when she is flooded by memories of her dark past, which influences her own relationship with the father of her child Franco (Boni), with whom she feels she cannot share  her secret. She decides to go and visit her brother Daniele (Lo Cascio) instead, who lives in the United States, to finally open up about her secret.
   

The entire film concentrates on the difference between whom we appear to be and who we really are inside, warts, past scars and all. This idea is reinforced by the fact that both the protagonist and her boyfriend are actors; people who play at being someone else for a living. Sabina works as a voice actress in Italy’s thriving dubbing industry whilst Franco has just started working on a television series for the failed film director Andrea Negri (Giuseppe Battiston, from Agata e la tempesta/Agata and the Storm). In a hilarious scene involving a dead woman in a hospital, Comencini spoofs the bad quality of Italian TV fiction. What is less hilarious is that Comencini herself sometimes hardly rises above this level.    

 

Some things have to be seen to be believed; one spinning shot goes straight into the crotch-area of a man's pyjamas. Such scenes have no place in anything other than a broad comedy. In Comencini’s work it significantly diminishes the film's dramatic strength and debases the seriousness of its topic. In La bestia nel cuore, its forced attempts to include humour at all often fail, despite a nicely executed, soppily sweet  Ozpetekian romance between two of the supporting characters (played with verve by Stefania Rocca and Angela Finocchiaro) that would do any Italian melodrama proud.

   

Overall, La bestia nel cuore suffers from this uneasiness of tone; it wants to be about a serious topic yet wants to include broad humour. Each scene works when taken separately but they are awkward when stitched together as a narrative. The film’s performances are strongest from its supporting players: Rocca, Finocchiaro, Battiston and Lo Cascio all deliver quality work whilst making do with stock characters. The multi-layered and uneasy romance between Mezzogiorno and Boni feels like something out of a soap-opera, which is probably due to its difference in tone from most of the other material. If you were a fan of La finestra di fronte and other Italian melodramas, this might get a pass, but otherwise just leave this one be.

 

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