‘Helen and the Bear’ Is an Intimate Saga of Love, California Style

For longtime political observers and students of California history, Alix Blair’s sublime documentary Helen and the Bear (receiving its U.S. premiere Sunday, June 23 at the Vogue in Frameline48, San Francisco’s long-running LGBTQ+ film festival) has an irresistible hook: The titular co-star is Rep. Pete McCloskey.

The eight-term congressman from San Mateo County — a product of Stanford (undergraduate and law) and a decorated Marine (the Korean War) — was the rare Republican who opposed the Vietnam War. That was his central issue when he challenged incumbent President Richard Nixon in the 1972 New Hampshire primary. The following year, amid the Watergate scandal, McCloskey was the first member of Congress to call for Nixon’s impeachment.

McCloskey is in his 90s when Helen and the Bear begins, but still a formidable figure. He remains politically involved, telephoning allies and staying up late watching election returns. But the documentary’s engine is its complicated and compelling heroine, the force of nature named Helen Hooper McCloskey.

Helen, Alix Blair writes in the production notes, was the cool California aunt her family would spend half a day with during their annual summer visit from Chicago. Aunt Helen’s nickname was The Hellion, though one wonders just how much the conservative Midwesterners knew about the love affairs and cocaine that Helen discloses in the film.

In her 20s, Helen got a job on McCloskey’s staff working on abortion rights and environmental legislation. He had a wife and four children but was devoted to the job above all; a few years after his divorce, Pete and Helen became a couple and married, notwithstanding an age difference of some 25 years.

This is all colorful and fascinating background, which Blair and editor Katrina Taylor periodically and artfully dispense in often-impressionistic collages of home movies, newsreel excerpts, still photographs and Helen’s journal entries. (In one simple yet effective wide shot, a TV sitting in the couple’s empty living room beams an old interview with Pete, bringing to life the ghosts that reside in their farmhouse’s walls.)

Blair and her collaborators make the risky but correct decision not to waste her extraordinary access on a boilerplate biographical piece. Helen and Pete’s past informs their present, of course, and Helen occasionally thinks about the road not taken, but the film’s thematic and emotional focus is the dynamic of a long-term love affair.

While this is the universal stuff of relationships, it is nonetheless a risky subject. Helen and the Bear is at times a working-on-the-farm film, a travelogue and a portrait of elder care. Blair opts not to manipulate and massage the material to create or inflate the drama, conflict and narrative thrust that we typically want and expect from movies. Helen and the Bear is an unusual film, therefore, that invites and demands the audience’s willingness to reflect on their own relationships.

You may be wondering, right about now, why Frameline is showing a movie about a 40-year heterosexual marriage. In her 30s and 40s, Helen had serious affairs with women. They were authentic expressions of her identity and sexuality, though they were also a response to being left alone by a workaholic husband. Pete criticized Helen at the time for her adultery (his word); it’s unclear if he was completely faithful during this period.

Ultimately, they remain unequivocally devoted to each other as they go about their days on the organic farm they operated for three decades. (Pete’s passing, in May of this year at 96, occurs off-screen, which leaves us remembering Helen and the Bear as a sun-dappled tale of life and death.)

I see Frameline’s inclusion of Helen and the Bear as a marker of how queer film festivals have evolved. In the beginning, representations of gay and lesbian identity (in its various forms) were limited (as in rare) and proscribed (as in positive). The range of relationships, and the nuance with which they can be depicted, are both much greater today.

To put it another way, the world has evolved and Frameline reflects the current and ongoing reality.

Like every other film, Helen and the Bear is informed by the viewer’s life experiences. Some will wallow in the echoes of the hungover ’70s. Others will be cast back to a time when “principled Republican” was not an oxymoron. And other viewers will revisit their various love and sexual relationships from a more, uh, mature perspective.

And you will interpret and judge — and yes, admire — Helen for her choices, her commitment and her integrity. Helen and the Bear is as rewarding as it is rare.

‘Helen and the Bear’ screens as part of Frameline48 on Sunday, June 23 at 2:15 p.m. at the Vogue Theatre (3290 Sacramento St., San Francisco). Tickets are currently at rush.