Jared Kahn | If You Could Only Be You / 2015

when the time is right

by Douglas Messerli

 

Jared Kahn (screenwriter and director)

If You Could Only Be You / 2015 [18 minutes]

 

This film by US director Jared Kahn presents the nightmare world in double where unfortunately the time is never right for handsome young men who have convinced themselves that they might be heterosexual despite their homosexual desires.

    Chris (played by the film’s writer and director) has recently become engaged to his girlfriend, Jillian (Morgan Matthews), and for the last few weeks have been busily planning their wedding. Yet something else is happening. Chris goes missing for long periods of time, and his attentions to Jillian have been minimal at the best. Even when she brings the problem up to him he leaves her, stalking the streets and a bar.

   His problem is one many closeted by men face: too late he has discovered and finally recognized that he is gay. He even confides to his friend, a former sexual partner, Rob (Phillip Pruitt), but still has not found the courage to reveal the situation to his fiancée, and the time for the marriage is fast approaching.

    After several drinks he determines to seek help by visiting his gay friend. But Rob already has picked up a beautiful older man in a club and is in the midst of enjoying sex when Chris bangs insistently on his door.

     Rob’s date, Jim (Robert Seeley), given the insistent knocks, is ready to hide believing the visitor must be an old or current angry boyfriend, but Rob insists he has neither and requests Jim to stay

where he is while he takes care of the problem. Desperate for help, Chris tries to barge his way in until Rob convinces him that it is a terrible inconvenient moment and finally sends Chris off.

    Chris leaves but so terribly needs consolation that he returns, sneaking into the apartment and finally opening the bedroom door only to discover that Rob’s pick-up for the night is none other than his father, both calling out Chris’ name simultaneously as he races off. There is clearly some explaining to be done.

    As Chris sneaks back into bed with his girlfriend, she reminds him that they have dinner with his parents the very next evening.

    Suddenly, it is no longer Chris who must face coming out and destroying his relationship with Jillian, but a matter of the years of lies told by his own father. The passive closeted man has suddenly become the active accuser ready to put an end to all their lies immediately. Given the dinner table conversation between Jillian and his mother Linda (Caroline Redekopp) about the

table decorations for the upcoming wedding and his father’s quietude, Chris finally stands up and leaves the room, his father chasing after him.

    In a quiet conversation outside, Chris angrily accuses his father of lying all these years, with Jim admitting it and his self-hate for doing so, his lack of courage for not telling his family. But, he explains, his son was also the best thing that ever happened to him and he was afraid of losing all. He truly intends to tell Chris’ mother, but at the right time. Meanwhile he expresses his pride that, as Rob has explained to him, that he is now ready to come out, presuming that he will also tell Jillian “at the right time.”

     They return to the table, with Chris finally determining that for him at least, this is now the right time for honesty. He turns to tell Jillian that he has something important to share with him at the very moment that she expresses the same sentiments.

     Given the gravity of Chris’ revelation, he suggests she go first. But her announcement, as delighted as she is in expressing it, is of far more consequence: she’s pregnant, Chris’ parents about to become grandparents.

     Is this what happened to Jim? Was Chris a child that forced him into a life of deception? Is time repeating itself?

     There are millions of people who surely would disagree with me I am certain, but the truly moral thing to do would be for Chris to share his news as well and let things fall where they will. Perhaps they could better raise a child together through living independent lives, or perhaps given the way things are, Jillian might be better off seeking an abortion. Or perhaps, an even braver act might be for Jim to suddenly admit that he was gay to his wife, paving the way for Chris to be able to follow his example and thus ending the decades of mendacity.

     Kahn’s cinema-fiction, however, offers so such pardons, seemingly trapping Chris into the same horrific dilemmas Jim has faced all of his life, a world without true sexual fulfillment and honest identity. There is never a “right time,” clearly but the immediate moment, and postponing such confessions can only lead to sorrow for all, including children.

     If to some people this phenomena may appear to be highly unlikely, I believe given how many thousands of such relationships based on the male (and female) cowardice of admitting one’s own sexuality before entering into heterosexual marriage—queer film is filled with a history of such examples—that perhaps the simultaneous father/son outings have occurred many times in history. It also appears as an issue in Nigel Finch’s 1991 TV drama, based on the David Leavitt novel, The Lost Language of Cranes.

     Here the issue is expressed quite boldly, with no resolution proffered. It appears for these two couples it is almost a destiny which wives, husbands, and children are doomed to face until someone has the strength to break through the lies told to others and the self. One wishes that If You Could Only Be You might be a feature film where the issue might be fully explored with a possible resolution by film’s end.

 

Los Angeles, March 9, 2026

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (March 2026).