Review of Beautiful Darling (2010) by Larry W — 29 Mar 2012

Maddeningly uneven documentary, at turns poignant, insightful and dull. Its main strength in the quality of comment from Darling's associates about her persona as a work of art, its similarities to and differences from the life of other trans women of her generation.

Its main weakness is that it assumes everyone watching will already be a huge fan of the subject, completely failing to establish her importance and only even attempting to touch on it about 50 minutes into the film.

At times it is almost arrogantly esoteric--even Darling's famous good-bye letter is offered as an afterthought, an Easter egg hidden well into the end credits.