Come See Me in the Good Light

The latest from documentarian Ryan White (Pamela a Love Story, The Case Against 8, Ask Dr. Ruth, Coded) is a surprisingly upbeat, funny, and heartwarming portrait of spoken-word poet, queer activist, and Colorado Poet Laureate Andrea Gibson as she and her partner, writer Megan Falley, live through Gibson's fight against terminal ovarian cancer. Yes, a cancer movies about a slam poet (typically one of the most self-serious of the performing arts) might not seem like a fun night at the movies, but White captures these goofy, loving, free-spirits in all their human glory as they navigate each day of life together. Focusing on their individual histories, their relationship, their different styles of work, and the way they each deal with impending mortality, the film is a rich, moving, life-affirming look into a loving, nurturing, highly entertaining partnership.

The two subjects come across as fully authentic and comfortable sharing access to their home and the intimate details of their lives with White and his crew, and the film's narrative arc unfolds the ways you might not expect. There are about five minutes near the third act climax in which things start to get a little repetitive and I wished White and editor Berenice Chavez had been a little more judicious in the cutting, but this brief stretch mainly served to remind me how outside I usually feel when watching a typical indie documentary of this type, and how inside of this one I had been. Then, the film makes a big shift, and I was right back inside again. I'm lucky to have seen this with a crowd of 750, who all felt powerfully connected to the two artists on screen. The movie, like its protagonists, is an empathetic force that's easy to embrace.