A Secret Love (2020)
Director: Chris Bolan
Screenwriters: Chris Bolan, Alexa L. Fogel, Brendan Mason
Starring: Terry Donahue, Pat Henschel, Diana Bolan
A Secret Love is a documentary that chronicles the long, private partnership of Terry Donahue, a former player in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, and her partner of seven decades, Pat Henschel. The film takes shape around a pivotal decision: where the couple will spend their retirement years. That choice forces both women to confront how much of their life they’ve kept hidden from family and how the future might change if they finally go public.
Early in the film we see the small, everyday compromises secrecy required—Terry answering a medical call and asking the caller to wait for her “cousin,” for instance. Those moments convey the emotional strain of living an undisclosed life. Within minutes the documentary makes clear the fear and vulnerability tied to revealing one’s truth: Terry worries that telling her family could change how they love her. The film’s depiction of coming out is neither melodramatic nor sanitized; it’s quiet, human, and supported by Pat, who stands beside Terry as she navigates the process. This narrative underscores that coming out remains a deeply personal struggle, even as public acceptance appears to grow across generations.
The documentary’s first half traces the arc of Pat and Terry’s life together, interweaving Terry’s baseball career with the social context of their era. By focusing specifically on lesbian history rather than presenting a broad, undifferentiated LGBT timeline, the film gives weight to experiences that are often overlooked. Talking-head interviews with contemporaries, archival footage, and personal snapshots combine to give a sense of the couple’s youthful passion—at one point they rented hotel rooms together just to be alone—alongside the quieter domesticity of their later years. The film sometimes softens the couple’s earlier sensuality in favor of a tender portrayal of an elderly pair, reflecting a common cultural tendency to desexualize older people; that choice is reinforced by the visible presence of Terry’s family throughout the documentary.
One important criticism of A Secret Love is the director’s personal connection to the subjects: Chris Bolan is Terry’s great-nephew. That closeness yields intimacy and access, but it also limits the film’s ability to interrogate the family dynamics that kept Terry and Pat hidden. Viewers repeatedly sense friction between Pat and members of Terry’s family, yet the film avoids a direct exploration of why the couple felt compelled to conceal their relationship. Whether the issue stems from individual personality conflicts or from homophobic attitudes within the family is left ambiguous. The documentary offers small clues—an openly religious mother, a brother with a critical tone, a niece who jokes awkwardly that the couple should marry because they are “living in sin”—but it stops short of a full reckoning. The result is a portrait that hints at familial prejudice without naming or fully contextualizing it.
Much of the tension centers on Terry’s niece, Diana, who functions at times as the film’s antagonist. Her uneasy interactions with Pat and her occasional attempts to claim Terry’s affection create uncomfortable scenes. Diana’s dismissive reference to the couple’s friends as their “other” family strikes a particularly painful note, exposing the fragile tensions that can arise when chosen families provide emotional support that biological relatives do not.
Outside the family conflicts, the film offers warm, illuminating glimpses of the couple’s social life: dinners with friends, an album of photographs showing Terry and Pat alongside other LGBTQ people, and affectionate moments that reveal the depth of their bond. These sequences are the documentary’s strongest assets, giving viewers an intimate sense of the love and joy that sustained the pair through decades of secrecy and change.
At times the film’s structure falters—midpoint pacing and the impact of Terry’s declining health complicate the narrative flow—yet the historical context and the sheer resilience of Pat and Terry’s relationship keep the documentary compelling. Despite its framing issues and the unanswered questions about family dynamics, A Secret Love succeeds as a moving testament to steadfast love, personal courage, and the quiet endurance of two women who built a life together against the odds.
Rating: 18/24