Christina Reviews *Don’t Tell (La bestia nel cuore)*

  **½

This is a movie about sexual abuse.   It would make a decent Lifetime movie (if all of the subplots were taken out).  In fact, that’s the only thing that separates this movie from a Lifetime movie---the confusing subplots.  The subplots and the cinematography.  I guess that’s all it takes to win an award for “Best Foreign Film.”

 To be honest, I found this movie to be très dull. Everything I already know about sexual abuse (the silence, the multi-faced predators, the lifelong scars, the way the kid may feel like he/she didn't do enough to stop it, etc.) were dealt with in this movie in a very heavy-handed way.  The movie even came complete with “the voice-over.” 

The movie dealt with sexual abuse in a somewhat intellectualized way, which is the worst way to handle a subject like this in a movie. The more intellectual the movie gets, the less emotional it is for the viewer. When I say that it was intellectual, I don't mean intelligent. I just mean analytical as opposed to visceral.

The only thing about this movie that was surprising was the blind lesbian subplot, and only because it didn't seem to fit with the rest of the story.  I got the sense that the blind woman was supposed to be symbolic, in a heavy-handed way, but that's about it.

And then the adultery subplot seemed to hammer home the idea that all men are pigs. Boring.

The acting and the cinematography were good. Other than that, I wasn't impressed.

It’s got an optimistic ending, and that's good. But I just can't recommend this movie. It could have been so much better. I like the hope it offers but, by the time the end came, I wasn't involved enough in the story for it to matter what became of the characters.

It offers hope to victims of abuse, but then so does therapy. A movie is different from therapy for a reason.