See You Then

Kris, Pooya Mohseni, a trans woman from Phoenix, travels to Los Angeles for a network security conference and to look after her cousin’s two children, setting the stage for a quiet, emotionally charged reunion. Naomi Liu, Lynn Chen, a professor and mother of two, is Kris’s former partner, and the two collide again for a single evening that becomes a careful excavation of their shared past.

Across the night, they revisit Kris’s transition and the fragile thread of their friendship that survived years apart. Kris offers an apology for the breakup, and Naomi opens up about the hurt she felt when Kris ended things. Naomi, a performance artist, confesses that she gave up on her own dreams and briefly moved back home with her parents before meeting her husband. Kris urges Naomi to return to the stage and reclaim her voice, hinting at the possibilities she might have missed. In turn, Kris reveals she has ended a long streak—she broke up with the first person she dated after her transition thirteen years ago—opening a candid dialogue about love, risk, and the courage to pursue happiness. The conversation naturally broadens to questions of gender reassignment surgery, dating, and the need to spend time with loved ones, with Kris insisting that, for her, being a woman carries its own hard-won challenges beyond the label itself.

The mood shifts as Naomi’s colleague Peter Gleason enters the scene, flirting with the pair at a bar. Peter, who is on a date with a former student, underscores a recurring theme: life is full of setbacks, yet Kris counters that every life contains its own, unique path. Naomi then introduces Kris to Martin, Nican Robinson, another colleague who appears to test Kris’s boundaries with a light, lingering flirtation. The night continues with a drive home to check on Naomi’s child, followed by a visit to Naomi’s campus workplace and office, where memories of their last night together surface with renewed intensity. Kris apologizes once more, and a painful memory surfaces: Naomi reveals Kris impregnated her before abandoning her. The revelation helps frame the deeper truth about Naomi’s career shift—she chose to keep the child, a decision that shaped the arc of her life and career. Naomi asserts that she will never be a mother, a statement that underscores the film’s steady examination of identity, responsibility, and the costs of love.

The final beats of the film concentrate the emotional tension into Naomi’s art and its destruction. In a quiet, intimate performance, she lies beside a painting that depicts a pregnant belly and then destroys the artwork, a stark, symbolic act of accepting who she is and embracing the course of her own life. Through intimate dialogue, difficult choices, and the ache of unresolved futures, the story unfolds as a nuanced meditation on gender, memory, and the lifelong work of choosing authenticity over comfort.

Last Updated: October 09, 2025 at 16:15