Dina Buno is pretty much your average, rambling, rainbow sock-wearing fortysomething girlie-girl. She likes the Kardashians (“They’re my guilty pleasure, I can’t help it”), Sex and the City, getting her nails done, the colour pink, and is planning her wedding to boyfriend, Scott (butterflies are the theme). She’s also neurodivergent, or on the autistic spectrum, with a history of trauma that presents her with unique challenges in her relationships. Dan Sickles and Antonio Santini’s extraordinary character study is, technically speaking, an observational documentary, though it plays more like a soft-focus romantic comedy, punctuated by pop songs and framed by pastel, lavender lighting.

Sickles and Santini excel at constructing a respectful (but never cold or clinical) distance from their subject, using long takes to let her explain herself in her own words. Dina is hypersensitive, self-aware, emotionally generous and, sometimes, ordinarily vain (on the beach in a leopard-print swimsuit,she craves compliments). She describes herself as “a strong-willed person” and “a butt girl” and is candid with her feelings. But the film is no pity party; instead, it’s a fascinating, rare look at how intimacy is built and sustained.

Scott, who also has Asperger syndrome, works at Wal-Mart and is an excellent dancer, but struggles to communicate sexual and emotional closeness (“It might be an ‘aspy’ thing,” he offers). Dina gently, patiently works on this with him, buying him a copy of The Joy of Sex and schooling him in the joys of foot rubs. The sweet love story that unfolds between them is never framed as anything we shouldn’t be watching. Even in a scene that takes place in a love motel, there’s no salaciousness.