Critics reviews

The film doesn't feel or look like a documentary. It's a character-based piece, but the structure is carefully considered with a clear narrative thrust and an unusual style. "Dina" plays almost like a rom-com, where catchy tunes underscore different sequences and similar scenes are placed in juxtaposition to one another, providing a wonderful back-and-forth look at his experience as opposed to hers.

The documentary that plays like a fictional narrative goes all the way back to the silent era. The new film "Dina," which advertises itself as a "real-life romantic comedy," is an unusually penetrating example of this type of picture.

This cute but ethically troubling and eerily clinical doc takes as its subject 48-year-old spinster Dina Buno... The film skates a very thin line between empathy and exploitation, as each chuckle arrives with a sharp pang of self-loathing. The motivations behind some of the creative decisions – including the use of one particularly tone-shifting piece of audio – are very tough to second guess.

I could only rejoice that the Grand Jury Prize for Documentary was given to Dina – for which Christine Vachon gets executive producer credit – for this is cinéma vérité at its best and most generous.

What elevates the film is its directness, which bypasses both irony and cynicism in a way that's not overly treacly. (A montage leading up to the wedding, set to Yaz's "Only You" is a highlight.) Dina is also frequently, surprisingly hilarious, but never at the expense of those on-screen; its honesty (and unabashed embrace of what would normally be considered kitsch) obviates any such issues.

...This is a serious, non-trivial dilemma and Dina deserves a lot of credit for venturing into terrain most movies aren't comfortable enough to acknowledge. I'm not worried about exploitation: the film's made with the clear comfort of all those participating ( Sickles has known Dina since birth), with no suspicious glances towards the camera. It's a little bit of a horror show, but, again, I suspect that's probably mostly my problem.