(director/writer: Alix Blair; screenwriter: Katrina Taylor; cinematographer: Alix Blair; editor: Katrina Taylor; music: J.R. Narrows/Troy Herion; cast: Pete McCloskey, Helen Hooper; Runtime: 81; MPAA Rating: NR; producers: Lauren Kushner, Jenny Slattery, Rebekah Fergusson, Alix Blair; Maailma/Roco Films; 2024)
“Intimate lyrical documentary.”
Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz
Alix Blair (“Farmer/Veteran”), Helen’s niece, directs and co-writes with Katrina Taylor this intimate lyrical documentary on the relationship between the now 96-year-old once prominent Republican Peter McCloskey and his much younger second wife Helen Hooper, a once California hippie now 70. They have lived together for the last 40 years, as he married her when he was a congressman in 1982 and she was on his staff.
Peter was the former US Representative from San Mateo, who served in the marines and was a Korean War vet. He had four kids with his first wife. The longtime conservative Republican was a deputy district attorney, Congressman (1967 to 1983). In the early 1970s he came out against the Vietnam War, which made him a different kind of Republican. In 1973 he co-authored the Endangered Species Act, showing his love for animals.
Fed up with the Republicans and their corruption, he became a Democrat in 2007 and became a presidential candidate.
His non-traditional marriage with Helen, someone searching for identity (and still having affairs with women), who had a longtime relationship with another woman before meeting Peter and grew up identifying herself as a boy. Alix catches the couple in a cinema verite filming of their relationship where he depends on her to care for him. Peter, as the Bear, finds his health growing worse and Helen thinking how much different life would be without him. The film uses diaries, Helen’s journals, photos, and candid recollections between them to tell its story.
It’s an emotional pic about a couple that are devoted to each other and have found a way to survive together in such a feckless world by each making sacrifices.
It reveals that sacrifices must be made to make a marriage work, as it says any marriage that lasts is to be congratulated (I’m not sure about that one!).
It played at the Hot Docs Film Festival.
REVIEWED ON 3/26/2025 GRADE: B
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