Andrea Gibson and Megan Falley appear in Come See Me in the Good Light by Ryan White, an official selection of the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. Courtesy of Sundance Institute | photo by Brandon Somerhalder.

Come See Me in the Good Light Review: You’ll Feel Many Goosebumps

Sundance 2025

/
8 mins read

Come See Me in the Good Light
(USA, 104 min.)
Dir. Ryan White
Programme: Premieres

 

Queer people generally experience two causes of death in movies: AIDS and violence. Too often, our lives serve as tragedies, anonymous statistics, or asides that contextualise the 1980s and ’90s in celebrity documentaries. People don’t fully grasp the damage it can do to a viewer to see his, her, or their life consistently framed as loss. Queer characters, in dramas but also in documentaries, are too rarely afforded the benefit of heartbreak. The stories in which they’re told often omit space for grief, pain, and catharsis. In short, they’re void of emotions.

Ryan White’s exceptional documentary Come See Me in the Good Light completely rewrites the script on queer heartbreak. To call it deeply moving is an understatement.

This disarming film invites audiences to share deeply personal moments with poet Andrea Gibson as they confront a serious cancer diagnosis. Gibson, somewhat ironically, learns that they have ovarian cancer. It’s terminal. For someone took a long time to feel comfortable with their own body and gender identity, Gibson takes the news as a poet should. It’s devastating, but also fuel. They pour their heart into new poetry. But facing certain death, they grasp better than ever a poet’s ability to imbue life through careful choices. It’s like how using a comma versus a period evokes the difference between a breath and death.

Gibson takes a deep breath and embarks on a mission with their partner, poet Megan Falley, to knock cancer out cold. White (Good Night Oppy, Pamela: A Love Story) takes a fly-on-the-wall approach as Gibson and Falley cherish every moment they spend together with their army of dogs in their Colorado home. The complications of the COVID-19 pandemic, moreover, forces them into isolation. They spend their days waiting and writing poetry. But whereas most people found the lockdown days brutally long, each one seems unfairly shorter than the last.

White sometimes follows Gibson and Falley into the hospitals as the poet undergoes treatment. Chemotherapy does a number on Gibson’s body, and eventually new forms of treatment attack the cancer best it can. While the medical side of things is part of the process, Come See Me in the Good Light looks at the moments in between. White and cinematographer Brandon Somerhalder favour images of cherished intimacy between Gibson and Falley. Their last few minutes in bed at night, for example, provide refreshingly poignant moments bear witness to a couple savouring the gift of another day. The camera captures their stories in natural light, rejecting the sterility of the hospitals and instead allowing the warmth of the loving relationship to radiate.

Gibson inevitably struggles with the vicissitudes that come with cancer. However, they bend the poet rather than break them. The film observes as Gibson and Falley experience life in three week cycles. That’s the amount of time Gibson generally has between tests that inform them how their blood cells are faring against the cancer. When the numbers go up, the partners’ spirits go down. And when those numbers fall, as they sometimes do, Gibson and Falley share unabashed jubilation as the literal and figurative window widens.

The numbers also matter for Gibson because they mean they may be able to work again. Come See Me in the Good Light recaps Gibson’s unique accomplishments as a poet. The four-time Denver Grand Slam Champion and Colorado poet laureate gets the rock star treatment from fans. They sell out sizable venues and electrify packed houses with spoken word performances that frequently address LGBTQ+ issues and rights through a personable voice. As Gibson’s health fails, though, they’re forced to cancer tours. The challenges of COVID also mean that the risk is too high to travel or be with crowds. Gibson pivots to YouTube best they can, but it doesn’t feed their soul. The power of spoken poetry resides in the live performance and in that seemingly ephemeral heart-swelling relationship built between speaker and receiver in the moment.

There’s a moment about partway through Come See Me in the Good Light in which White’s voice appears offscreen. He asks Gibson about performing, and they can’t deny how deeply they crave one more show before they do. While the director’s presence is obviously implied throughout the film, his appearance in this query lets the emotional nakedness of Gibson’s response set in: prolonging life only means so much to Gibson if their voice can’t be heard.

Gibson’s voice resonates throughout the film in poetic voiceovers. Their poems double as conventional narration or interviews, imbuing the film with unabashed emotions. The voiceover hugs the film with symbols and metaphors that invite one to appreciate the poetry of life in the face of death. Gibson really knows how to deliver a poem with dramatic gusto, too. White captures their performances that relish every one of those commas, commanding audiences as they veer towards the inevitable full stop in poems like “Your Life” or (my favourite) “Acceptance Speech After Setting the World Record in Goosebumps.” If any film reminds audiences of the power of a good ugly cry, this is it.

The film takes a cue from the poet, too, and finds a novel metaphor for Gibson’s ongoing ride with cancer. Gibson and Falley have a peculiarly antagonistic mailbox. It just keeps falling down. Sometimes the snow plow annihilates it. Other times, the wind or perhaps fate knocks it over. Gibson defiantly sets that mailbox upright. And when it can’t stand any longer, they order a new one. And a new one after that. The mailbox also seems to live in three-week cycles, and yet manages to deliver through thick and thin.

Even though Come See Me in the Good Light deals with weighty material, it finds a winning message in Gibson’s ability to match the strength of their mailbox. The best films that deal with death turn their attention to life and this film is no different. In doing so, it provides refreshing space to experience grief, joy, and heartache, but above all: love.

Come See Me in the Good Light premiered at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival.

Pat Mullen is the publisher of POV Magazine. He holds a Master’s in Film Studies from Carleton University where his research focused on adaptation and Canadian cinema. Pat has also contributed to outlets including The Canadian Encyclopedia, Paste, That Shelf, Sharp, Xtra, and Complex. He is the vice president of the Toronto Film Critics Association and an international voter for the Golden Globe Awards.

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