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“In the spring of 2011, at the age of 18, my brother Matthew got his first real girlfriend,” explains Jackie (Tallie Medel) in voiceover at the beginning of “The Unspeakable Act,” written, edited and directed by Dan Sallitt in 2012.
These words begin Jackie’s last year of high school as she confronts her long-held desire for her brother. Matthew (Sky Hirschkron), who is aware of and patient with his sister’s feelings for him, and who understandably wants to put some distance between them to explore other relationships, including some that he might fulfill. His decision to set boundaries sends Jackie into a spiral. She has trouble keeping food down, she can’t sleep, and she constantly badgers her brother for information about her new boyfriend, that is until he kills her. Jackie’s desire for Matthew still burns brightly after he leaves for college, but his absence forces her to build a life outside of her attraction to him, even if she thinks about him while sleeping with boys in her class.
Sallitt’s greatest coup in “The Unspeakable Act” is his refusal to treat his characters as cowards in the service of a “horrible” foundation. Jackie and Matthew are mostly normal teenagers with full social lives and creative pursuits. They have opinions on literature, music, and sex. They are close to their mother but far away from their older siblings. Medel and Hirschkron portray their characters as intelligent, self-aware people who are sure to chart fruitful individual paths, even if they get in their own way from time to time. They are very consistent, except for that one thing.
But as much as Sallitt does not make Jackie happy crazy love, in his own inspiration, he also approaches her with an unconventional confusion, and with Matthew’s responsive equality, with appropriate size. Her feelings for her brother are real, which means she has to deal with them if she wants to be a part of society. Her emotional upheaval comes as a result of realizing that she can’t continue to be an adult still pining for Mata, which inevitably means she won’t stay as close to him emotionally. With “The Unspeakable Act,” Salit honed in on a crucial coming-of-age lesson: you can’t always get what you want.
Fourteen years later, Sallitt returns with “What Can’t Be Mentioned”, a sequel to “The Unspeakable Act” that comes about ten years later when Jackie, now in her late twenties, learns that Matthew is going to have a child with his partner Lily (Kit Zauhar, director of “Actual People” and “This Closeness”). While Jackie displays all the outward trappings of a stable adult, especially a good job as a professional therapist and a shared apartment with her boyfriend Anthony (Kyle McCormack), Sallitt quickly shows cracks in the face. She experiences a new sexual incompatibility with Anthony that eventually pushes them both into sex therapy, with awkward homecoming exercises that Jackie struggles to take seriously. She seems to be great at her job, but she also admits to having mixed feelings with a forty-something client who privately worries that her two children may be exploring their sexuality together.
Sallitt presents Jackie’s personal and professional struggles as unique bumps that could appear to anyone. But it also casts them under the shadow of her youth that attracts Matthew, who may still live in her subconscious as a party guest who has overstayed her welcome. When she receives news of Matthew’s impending baby, she goes through a week of trying to reconnect with him and her partner, who she describes to Anthony as “okay, but not good enough for him.” Instead of attaching ourselves to the couple, however, she spends the week getting tanked on red wine and probing Lily with deliberately provocative questions about her bisexuality and how pregnancy has affected her sex life with her brother.
Lily responds with a monk-like smile in response to Jackie’s rude questions. (“My parents are hippies,” she says softly. “Talking about sex is like talking about laundry.”) Sallitt crucially avoids emphasizing the irony that Jackie can’t process that Matthew and Lily’s shared situation makes them compatible. Zauhar matches Hirschkron’s fair temperament even as Lily tries to get more information about Jackie from Matthew. Is she an alcoholic? “She likes to cut loose sometimes. She’ll be fine when she’s back home,” Matthew replied calmly. Is she gay? After all, people hide it from those closest to them all the time. “Trust me, she’s not gay,” Matthew insists. An untold secret creates a small rift between the happy couple that could balloon over the years.
“Entioned” runs just over an hour, making it the rare film where you wish the filmmaker would extend his work by even 10 or 15 minutes, perhaps to intensify some of his silent conflicts, or even just to give the viewer a little more time with the characters. Sallitt repeats the formal “Unspeakable” style in “Reference” (static compositions, no camera movement), but changes the editing rhythm to sharper cuts that capture the harsher routine of a young professional age. It also deepens the world of “Named” by referring to characters from “Unspeakable”: childhood therapist Jackie Linda (Caroline Luft) appears over Zoom to offer advice, and Matthew mentions talking to their mother and older brother Will. (Meanwhile, their second oldest sister Jeanne, whom Jackie predicts will leave one day and never look back in “Unspeakable,” is never mentioned.) Sallitt strives for an understated continuity that marks a living world full of unspoken history.
“Unspeakable” and “Named” are distinct enough entities that one could watch the latter without having seen the former and still feel complete. However, “Named” is clearly a richer text in the context of “Unspeakable,” if only to fully understand how Medel redefines Jackie between the two films. They certainly develop adolescent instability that was previously confined to adult neuroticism without sacrificing any complexity. They bring a familiar but ultimately charged edge to Jackie’s scenes with Matthew, which Hirschkron promises to portray as almost challenging. (He may have moved on from reading Mueller to “Stoner,” but he’s still basically the same person he was in “Unspeakable.”) Medel lends a spicy, invisible quality to Jackie even when they’re sitting in a chair and glaring at whoever catches their eye. Most of this year’s high-profile, high-profile shows can’t muster that level of attention.
In an interview with a filmmaker upon the release of “Unspeakable,” Sallitt insightfully says that he “does not see Jackie’s incestuous desire as temporary or part of her journey to adulthood.” Instead he believes that “It’s just who she is, and she has to put a lid on that desire to live comfortably, she has to cultivate other aspects of herself.” “Named” effectively goes on from this particular point of view, with Mendel at times showing Jackie as managing a critical situation, and Hirschkron capturing the special sympathy of a sibling for their sister’s pain. The last couple scenes of “Reference” reveal Sallitt’s updated perspective on the intervening decade and a half, which feels uncomfortable but ultimately hard-won. It turns out that if you try sometimes, you might find that you get what you need.
Grade: B
“What Not Be Mentioned” premiered at the 2026 New York Film Festival. It is currently seeking US distribution.
