Movie Review - A Secret Love (Pride Month)

Pride Month is the commemoration of the gay rights movement in the United States and the push for LGBTQ rights overall. It's honored every year with parades and other celebrations. Those celebrations include films and TV shows about LGBTQ people. This documentary was released on the Internet a week after the release of Circus of Books (2020), another documentary about a director making a film about family members who have a gay secret. In Circus of Books, director Rachel Mason interviewed her parents who secretly owned a store that sold gay pornography, despite her parents not being gay themselves. Here, director Chris Bolan follows his aunt who had the secret of herself being gay and basically hiding it for over 60 years.

Terry Donahue is Bolan's aunt. She was born in Canada and grew up on a farm there. She played baseball as a young woman. She was even a consultant on the film A League of Their Own (1992). She had moved to Chicago where she eventually settled. Before then, she met Pat Henschel in 1947. The two immediately bonded. Over the years, they had a lot of ups and downs, including marriages to men and losses of family members. The two eventually realized they were lesbians and were attracted to each other. Growing up, they witnessed a lot of homophobia and their relationship started before the Stonewall riots in 1969, which is considered the start of the gay rights movement and the reason why we recognize Pride Month. Prior to Stonewall, being gay could get a person arrested and treated poorly. As a result, Donahue and Henschel kept their relationship a secret from their family. That secrecy since 1947 finally ended around 2009.

Diana Bolan also has Donahue as an aunt. She grew up loving her aunt. Her aunt was there for her for key moments of her life. Yet, Bolan didn't know her aunt was a lesbian until 2009 when Donahue finally admitted the truth to her family. Some family members didn't accept it or shunned Donahue. Others didn't. Bolan was part of the people who accepted her aunt and continued to love her. In fact, it's Bolan's love for her aunt that becomes a source of conflict in the narrative of the film.

That conflict is centered around the health problems of Donahue, which have started to occur now that Donahue is in an octogenarian. Specifically, she's said to have Parkinson's disease. It's gotten to the point that her long-time partner, Henschel has to be her caregiver, but Henschel is getting elderly herself, so being a caregiver is something that would be taxing. Bolan's suggestion is that they move to a nursing home or senior living apartment. Henschel though doesn't want to move from their home of decades into an old folks home. A chunk of the drama comes from the tension between Henschel's wishes versus Bolan's wishes.

There aren't that many films, narrative or documentary, about an elderly, same-sex couple. Christopher Plummer's Oscar win for Beginners (2010) was about an elderly gay man coming out late in life, but that film was more about his heterosexual son grappling with it. The focus isn't on the same-sex relationship with the elderly gay man. There are films about young gay man hooking up briefly or having brief connections with older men, but it's rare to have a film about an aging gay couple, especially one in the age-range of Donahue and Henschel. A comparable film is Edie & Thea: A Very Long Engagement (2010). Watching this film also reminded me of a short film called The Apple Tree by Matthew Ladensack, which is more about an elderly gay man moving into an old folks home and the issues he encounters there. This film is like an all-female version of that.

Rated TV-14.

Running Time: 1 hr. and 22 mins.

Available on Netflix.