Bye-Child (2003)

• 79%
• 2003
• Drama
• Mystery
• Bernard McLaverty
• Susan Lynch
• Dick Holland
• Brian Devlin

Bye-Child is Bernard MacLaverty's film version of Seamus Heaney's poem of the same title. It concerns the story of a male child who is secretly kept in a henhouse at the bottom of a garden in a village in Ireland. The child, it is implied, is the product of incestuous relations, the mother (Susan Lynch) having been sexually abused by her monstrous father (Dick Holland). The child (Jenna McCormick) lives in the henhouse, being fed scraps of left-overs in secret at night. The reason for hiding him is given in flashback sequence: the father tries to smother the child and in terror the woman strikes him on the head, rendering him incapacitated for the rest of his days. She takes the baby and leaves him in the henhouse. it is implied that this is not an easy decision, but that the mother feels it is the only way to save the child. The discovery of the freal boy is made when some local boys are playing hide-and-seek in the garden and one child (Daniel McGrady) sees the boy at the window. This is reported to the local priest (Brian Devlin) after the following Sunday's service and the priest responds by going to the house to find out for himself. In a shocking sequence he opens the door to the henhouse and on seeing the child is absolutely appalled. He takes the child out, through the house, past the woman and her father, and into the street where the audience see the child's face for the first time. The ending is shocking, MacLaverty creating a visual contrast between the 'normal' boy who instigated the find and the poor, feral child, unable to speak and completely dehumanised.