![‘Tell Me Everything’ Review: A Tale Of Complex Father-Son Betrayal That Doesn’t Say Enough [Sundance]](https://cdn.theplaylist.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/31203713/Tell_Me_Everything-Still_1-Sundance.jpg "‘Tell Me Everything’ Review: A Tale Of Complex Father-Son Betrayal That Doesn’t Say Enough [Sundance]")
Moshe Rosenthal’s second feature, “Tell Me Everything,” billed by Sundance as a drama about a boy reckoning with a “shattering truth” about his father (Assi Cohen) at the height of the AIDS crisis, straddles two timelines. There’s the protagonist, Boaz, at age 12 in 1987 (played by the talented young newcomer Yair Mazor), and then there’s Boaz in 1996 (played by Ido Tako). It’s no small feat, splitting your lead role between two actors and maintaining emotional momentum across nearly a decade. Rosenthal’s script spends its first chapter presenting a complex tale of family, adolescence, and sexuality, but despite brilliant visuals and able performers, the second half drags on, resolving little and leading nowhere.
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The section of the film set in 1987 is both its most compelling and most disturbing. Boaz’s relationship with his sisters (Mor Dimri and Neta Orbach) in their consummately ’80s pastel-pink apartment is very charming, and one key scene with the three of them together is easily when “Tell Me Everything” is at its best. (Look out for an Air Supply needle drop.) At 12, Boaz already has a lot going on: he shares a two-bedroom apartment with his parents and two teenage sisters, and his parents’ businesses are struggling, leaving them with little means. He’s planning his bar mitzvah and the symbolic transition into manhood that accompanies it. And then he sees his dad canoodling with another man at their public pool.
To top it all off, Boaz’s relationships with each of his parents are…unsettling. In their first scene together, his father asks whether Boaz’s penis has grown yet and offers to look at it for him. Boaz’s mother (Keren Tzur) relies on him for massages, cooing that Boaz “understands” her in a special way. In a scene where Boaz tries to stop his father from sleeping with his mother — afraid that he will give her AIDS and kill her — Boaz is strangely made to fight for his mother’s affection, and his father becomes violently aggressive in response. “Tell Me Everything” never elucidates its stance on these dynamics, leaving viewers to wonder whether they even affect Boaz at all.
Of course, it’s easy for the worldwide hysteria surrounding AIDS — and homosexuality in general — to feel silly now, when so many medical and legal advances have made life easier for gay and HIV-positive men. Rosenthal tries to bring viewers into that erstwhile panic, referencing news articles and broadcasts about the epidemic, painting his characters in shades of understandable ignorance. But his script doesn’t sustain that momentum, and some creative choices offer mixed messaging. (If gay sex isn’t dark and dangerous, why are there multiple park cruising scenes lit in scandalous reds and underscored by foreboding jazz music?) As a result, the sins of Boaz’s father feel like a distraction. After all, it’s hard to be scandalized by Boaz’s closeted dad when there’s so much implicit incest going on — especially when it’s unclear how the film feels about that, too.
When the ’90s chapter rolls around, and Boaz seeks reconciliation with the father he ostracized, it feels like this narrative is tying up its least dire loose ends. There is some resolution for Boaz’s bizarre relationship with his mother, but all of Dad’s weirdness is effectively swept under the rug. It’s unsatisfying, to say the least — for Boaz’s character to truly evolve, he would need to come to terms with his dad’s homosexuality, sure, but he would also need to process the darker aspects of their relationship.
In the end, “Tell Me Everything” ironically holds back. While the art direction and performances make this a compelling, nostalgic watch — particularly in the first half the script sets up a litany of taboos and then spends a lot of time not breaking them. Relationships shift, and familial roles change, but ultimately, this film goes the way of Boaz’s mother, who encourages her children to bottle up their troubles, wary of becoming the subject of intracommunity scrutiny. For a movie about addressing hard truths, “Tell Me Everything” leaves far too much unsaid. [D]
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