Don't Tell, Italy's submission for the foreign-language Oscar, has strong performances, but the story takes too long to get off the ground.
Comment
03/24/06
Don't Tell (2005)
29
%
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:21
Fresh:6
Rotten:15
Average Rating:5.3/10
Runtime: 2 hrs
Genre: Foreign Films
US Box Office: $0
Synopsis: Based upon the celebrated novel La Bestia nel Cuore, DON'T TELL is the mesmerizing story of a woman's journey into her past and the aftermath of confronting personal demons long hidden beneath the... [More]
Reviews for Don't Tell
Top CriticThe film meanders and becomes painfully arbitrary in its storyline... Child abuse + funny lesbians = hilarious!!!
03/21/06
Though tackling such potentially subversive subjects as incest and lesbianism, this inexplicably Oscar-nominee from Italy is basically a Lifetime Original performed as a magic show.
03/19/06
Well worth seeing for its sensitive and never maudlin portrayal of a sister and brother bonded together by a family secret.
03/17/06
Here's the problem with Cristina Comencini's Don't Tell: it should have been directed by Pedro Almodovar.
03/17/06
It manages to treat a disturbing subject without despairing.
03/17/06
Days of Our Lives fans, enjoy.
03/17/06
It's swiftly paced and never dull, but the heavy-handed symbolism comes fast and thick.
03/17/06
Just because American films frequently exploit repressed memories as a plot device in nasty genre pictures doesn't make the genteel Don't Tell a sophisticated or particularly insightful film.
03/16/06
A persuasive if not groundbreaking drama.
03/16/06
Top CriticDon't Tell, which was unaccountably nominated for an Oscar for best foreign language film, is no better than a second-tier candidate for the Lifetime Channel.
03/16/06
Top CriticGoes off on too many tangents from the central story with irrelevant subplots that might actually have been decent movies on their own.
03/16/06
A not-bad soap opera.
03/16/06
A well-acted melodrama with some engaging characters and a storyline that holds the attention
03/16/06
The lifelong shame and trauma experienced by the victims of childhood incest are grippingly dramatized by Cristina Comencini, consummate mistress of Italian family drama, in Don't Tell, probably her most successful film.
03/16/06
Top CriticComencini translates these tensions from her novel Beast in the Heart with a literal hand that is inclined to underscore anguished looks with explanatory flashbacks.
03/16/06
Such tales are the issue du jour stateside, which makes Don't Tell's slavish adherence to Dr. Phil–inspired recovered-memory orthodoxies seem more than a touch ingenuous.
03/16/06
A paradigmatically mediocre foreign-film-Oscar nominee.
03/14/06
Comencini is attempting to put on some kind of show about modern gender and sexuality issues, but that's all it is: a show, and a fatuous one at that.
02/24/06
Powerfully moving but laced with incisive wit.
10/24/05
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