Don't Tell (La bestia nel cuore) is a 2005 film from Italy directed by Cristina Comencini.
Sabina is a would-be actress who has settled for a more stable career as a voice actress dubbing foreign works into Italian. She is living with Franco, a handsome actor who is frustrated at the lack of opportunities in theater but hesitates to lower himself by doing TV. Other than career concerns, nothing seems to be wrong with relationship—until Sabina has a disturbing nightmare about her childhood. Seeking answers, vaguely troubled, Sabina goes off to America to spend a holiday season with her brother Daniele, who teaches at an American university. Eventually, Daniele reveals a terrible secret about their shared past.
A subplot features Emilia, Sabina's friend from childhood, who went blind from a degenerative eye disease and is now a shut-in. Emilia makes a surprising connection with Maria, a middle-aged divorcee who is Sabina's voice acting director.
Adapted by Comencini from her own novel La bestia nel cuore, "Beasts of the Heart"—some English-language sources refer to this film as Beasts of the Heart.
Tropes:
- Absence Makes the Heart Go Yonder: Discussed Trope. Sabina, in a highly agitated mood, says that she shouldn't leave for the holidays because Franco is a man and a man will stick his dick in anything when he gets horny. He is offended, but as it turns out she's right, as he has a one night stand with a sexy actress from the TV show.
- Abusive Parents: Both Sabina and Daniele were sexually abused by their father. Their mother for her part knew what was happening, but told Daniele that his father was "weak" and to keep quiet.
- Anguished Declaration of Love: From Emilia to Maria at the end, as the former asks why they're breaking up. They get back together.
- Bi-Wildered: Emilia is all lesbian, but Maria was married to a man for a long time, had a daughter, and only got divorced in the first place because he dumped her for a babe his daughter's age. Emilia and Maria start a relationship, but when Maria muses about getting together with Andrea (that's a masculine name in Italy) and says that she still likes men, Emilia gets extremely upset. They temporarily break up.
- Blind Mistake: A rare use of this for drama. Emilia is making an Anguished Declaration of Love and asking to get back together with Maria, but she misjudges where Maria's voice came from and takes a couple steps past her, still reaching out. Maria hesitates before calling out, then they embrace.
- Catapult Nightmare: Unusually, the catapult is shown first, before the nightmare. It's only after Franco calms Sabina down and she goes back to sleep that the nightmare—a pretty unambiguous dream sequence showing that Sabina's father molested her—is shown.
- Cigarette of Anxiety: Daniele has to light a cigarette while telling Sabina about how their father regularly abused him, and how he later found out that their father molested Sabina twice.
- Conversational Troping: Andrea's passion project is a movie about two garbage workers who find a Doorstop Baby, or rather a Dumpster Baby as they're emptying a dumpster. Franco says that's unrealistic as anyone who found a dumpster baby would just call the police rather than take the baby home, to which Andrea says that Franco has been watching too much TV.
- The Disease That Shall Not Be Named: Sabina comments about how her parents died two years apart of "the same illness". Daniele talks about how their father suffered from pain and withered away and was given morphine. The word "cancer" is never spoken.
- Imagine Spot: A single imagine spot in which Emilia leans forward to kiss Sabina, only for the film to cut back to reality, is how the audience learns that Emilia is a lesbian with an attraction for her friend.
- Incompatible Orientation: Sabina is fully aware that Emilia, her childhood friend, is a lesbian and in love with her—but Sabina is straight.
- Match Cut: A series of match cuts transition between a flashback (child Sabina running down the hallway to her parents' bedroom, and apparently interrupting her father confessing to her mother) and the present (adult Sabina running down an empty train car, trying to get help, after she has gone into labor).
- The Matchmaker: It's ambiguous as to whether Sabina has romantic intentions when she arranges for Maria (lonely and depressed after her husband dumped her) to go over and meet Emilia (a lesbian, and a shut-in because she is blind), or whether she's just trying to get two people who need to make friends together. In any case, Sabina has Maria come over to read an email to Emilia, and romance blooms.
- Medical Drama: In-Universe this is the acting job that Franco accepts, starring as a doctor in an Italian medical drama that Andrea is directing. Andrea eventually confesses that the show is stupid, and from the one scene shown, it is in fact an unbearably cheesy melodrama.
- New Year Has Come: Sabina celebrates the New Year in America at the party that her brother is hosting. It's seconds before the stroke of midnight when an offhand comment from Anna about how her husband is now "safe" from the past that leads Sabina to realize what happened decades ago. Daniele is lighting the New Year fireworks in the backyard when a hysterical Sabina charges out to confront him.Sabina: Safe from what? Safe from what? Safe from what?
- One Dialogue, Two Conversations: Franco picks up on Sabina's standoffish manner and asks what's going on. Sabina says that something happened in America and she's "ashamed" to tell him. She's talking about the discovery of her childhood sexual abuse, but Franco assumes she is talking about cheating on him and confesses that he cheated on her too.
- Parental Incest: Both Sabina and Daniele were sexually abused by their father. With Sabina it only happened twice when she was quite young and she's repressed the memory. With Daniele it was much more frequent, and he remembers everything.
- Prima Donna Director: Andrea, who is introduced on a TV set screaming about the actors not knowing their lines and shouting at a PA to bring him sushi for lunch. Subverted when it's revealed that Andrea regards the TV show he's doing as hack work, misses the theater, and has an art film ready to go in his head.
- Time Skip: The last act begins with a shot of heavily pregnant Sabina walking around, as the film skips forward some months from the holiday season to the following summer.
- Zip Me Up: The exact moment at which the Emilia-Maria friendship starts tipping over to romance is the scene where Emilia is trying on dresses, and she asks Maria to help zip her up, and Maria is obviously taken aback by Emilia's trim, lovely figure.
