Two exceptional short documentaries. From Sweden, Marcus Lindeen’s The Regretters (2010, 58 min., in Swedish with subtitles) consists largely of a conversation between Mikael and Orlando, two people who underwent sex changes and now regret them; questioning each other and answering with candor, they broach issues of love, gender, truth, and identity. From Denmark, Nicole Nielsen Horanyi’s The DeVilles (2009, 56 min., in English) transforms a mundane subject—the marriage difficulties of a punk rocker and a burlesque dancer—by virtue of its camera work, editing, and music; it plays less like a documentary than like an opulent, improvised melodrama, complete with a symphonic score. Lindeen’s thoughtful reverse shots and Horanyi’s virtuosic tracking shots reminded me how little most other documentaries take advantage of form.
