If I Tell You Review: Tessa Blake’s Coming-of-Age Mystery Trades Bathos for Pathos

Some films sneak up on the viewer and grow on you. That’s the experience of If I Tell You, a film that treats a coming-of-age mystery with a dark heart and eventually finds the light with tender, loving care. A stellar cast makes much of this possible, including Allison Miller, who anchors the film with an emotionally gripping, deeply effective performance.

If I Tell You follows Michael (Etienne Kellici of Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1), a 12-year-old boy growing up in the suburban backwoods of Ely, Minnesota. It’s your typical story of kids coming of age in Middle America: spending the summer running through the woods, playing games, and avoiding the older kids who terrorize them. No, this is not Stand by Me.

What is If I Tell You about?

So we will not be finding a dead body anytime soon. The story explores that complicated age when Michael still has childlike naïveté but also knows he is past the age of misinterpretation. That becomes clear when his mother, Rosemary (13 Reasons Why’s Allison Miller), leaves for a birthday party alone because his father, Brian (I’m Your Woman‘s Bill Heck), is too drunk to attend.

When Rosemary returns that night, Michael catches her sitting alone in the car. Later, he hears her crying as his father berates her and Rosemary tells him to leave her alone. Michael’s family life is a struggle, marked by his parents’ tension and Brian being out of work. His grandmother (Carol Kane) stands in the shadows, watching, listening, and guiding him through this difficult time.

If I Tell You is from director Tessa Blake, who co-wrote the script with Jennifer Manocherian (Marry Harry). Based on the Scottish novel Closed Doors by Lisa O’Donnell, this is Ms. Blake’s first feature film behind the camera after spending the better part of two decades directing episodic television, from CBS procedurals and ABC primetime soaps to horror anthologies.

If I Tell You Review

That experience must have served as a valuable training ground, helping the film dip its toes into the coming-of-age genre. It also explores the tender age of growing up through a sobering mystery that sends young Michael’s imagination down a path toward the horrific. You would hope the film kept some of the source material, Ms. O’Donnell’s much-praised comic relief, to undercut the tension.

However, the film adaptation is a poignant version of the source material, focusing equally on family group dynamics and an intriguing mystery. Blake and Ms. Manocherian capture the source material on the screen as something honest and real, ultimately traumatic and yet therapeutic. The arrival of a more prominent Carol Kane in later scenes brings levity through her presence alone.

The juxtaposition of a family event with scenes of Kellici’s Michael escaping into the woods is evident. It highlights the character using the vast isolation of the surrounding woods and lakes as an escape. The American adaptation of the source material is based in Scotland and paints a broader picture of how we process s*xual assault, from a person-in-environment perspective.

Is If I Tell You worth watching?

In the end, If I Tell You respects its audience. You will not find a monologue of exposition; the viewer gets to figure out what is going on with Rosemary on their own. Ultimately, it tells the story with little sentimentality, giving the cast enough depth to find pathos rather than fall into bathos.

Along with a standout performance from A Million Little Things’ Allison Miller, Tessa Blake’s first feature, which has been sitting on the shelves for nearly two years, is a stunning debut, and announces her as a filmmaker to watch in the future. Let’s hope she and Miller team up again soon and often.

You can watch If I Tell You in select theaters across the country starting August 27th!

If I Tell You Review: Tessa Blake’s Coming-of-Age Mystery Trades Bathos for Pathos