The buoyant new queer dramedy world-premiering at the Out on Film Festival suggests there can be a second “coming out”: finally becoming comfortable in one’s own skin within a community that can impose its own seemingly impossible body standards. Juli-Ann De Barros and Nicholas Molencupp’s In Between (A-) plumbs the pop psychology of a “husky” gay man waiting for his prince to come while the little voices in his head, and considerably louder ones on the dating apps, broadcast decidedly mixed signals. Molencupp tells his own story as writer, co-director and extremely affable leading man, bringing brazen panache to an empowering tale that rarely gets told with this much wit, candor and romantic optimism. Consistently funny and empathetic, he plays a burly young gay man who has spent much of his dating life wondering why the perfect tens he desires aren’t exactly lining up, and a terrific soliloquy captures the exhausting marathon of succeeding at work and everywhere else only to score neutral-to-negative points in the impossible queer dating milieu. Cameron Moir is deeply effective as the primary and surprising love interest, a man forced to reconcile his genuine attraction with the entrenched expectations of his peer group, while Sachin Bhat and Elle Army are especially electric as the protagonist’s best friend and sister in an altogether winning ensemble. Krystal Joy Brown nearly walks away with the movie as a therapist who radiates such glorious self-possession that she becomes the living embodiment of self-acceptance, a personified gay anthem of self-love and the patron saint everyone deserves. Through meet-cutes, courting rituals, shame valleys and fantasy sequences, this entertaining movie cycles its characters through rejection and renewal with poignant humor and enough emotional honesty to keep its romcom buoyancy grounded. There is little time to wallow when an afternoon by the pool, a night of gay bingo or group karaoke comes calling, and the film understands that finding your people can be as essential as finding your person. De Barros and Molencupp ultimately deliver exactly what this kind of movie should: a relatable, big-hearted framework for seeing yourself differently while gently challenging a community to broaden its definition of who deserves to be desired. It’s not merely a film about acceptance; it is a joyful celebration of becoming comfortable enough in your own skin to demand love without first demanding that you become somebody else.