Dina

This vérité por­trait of a court­ing cou­ple is, at times, a chal­lenge to watch. Dina, a prizewin­ner at Sun­dance, fol­lows Dina and Scott, a mid­dle-aged autis­tic cou­ple ten­ta­tive­ly embark­ing on a rela­tion­ship and ulti­mate­ly get­ting mar­ried. It would be easy for Dina to be too twee, to push its pro­tag­o­nists into a cloy­ing nar­ra­tive of inspi­ra­tion porn, but the film thank­ful­ly avoids that route, favour­ing a col­lage of moments from Dina’s life which avoids any added commentary.

Dina has had an exceed­ing­ly dif­fi­cult exis­tence – a trau­mat­ic past of vio­lence and abuse is grad­u­al­ly revealed – and the film presents her as a strong-willed and sen­si­tive woman. Many moments are inten­tion­al­ly mun­dane: the film opens with Dina at the den­tist, and lat­er we see her loung­ing around watch­ing Sex and the City on DVD. On the sur­face, she could be any sub­ur­ban woman.

Dina’s Penn­syl­va­nia home­town is shot in ele­gant­ly mut­ed tones, with com­po­si­tions of lone­ly look­ing all-Amer­i­can edi­fices that recall the paint­ings of Edward Hop­per. The film can at times be uncom­fort­able: she and her still-vir­ginal fiancé́ have awk­ward con­ver­sa­tions about sex, and direc­tors Dan Sick­les and Anto­nio San­ti­ni have no qualms about allow­ing the view­er to be a fly on the wall. The film ends on a hope­ful note, but there’s some­thing dis­tinct­ly dis­ori­ent­ing about hav­ing such an inti­mate view of peo­ple who are too often marginalised.

The dis­ori­en­ta­tion of Dina, the flinch­ing at awk­ward­ness and inti­ma­cy, most­ly works, and in one telling moment, she enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly dis­cuss­es her love of real­i­ty TV. Dina has none of the brash­ness of this doc­u­men­tary mode, but she and Scott, with their bor­der­line-painful vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties sit­ting right on the sur­face, are far more engag­ing to watch than the aver­age real­i­ty star. We root for them to be hap­py togeth­er, while simul­ta­ne­ous­ly feel­ing dis­com­fort with how close the film places us to them.