The bond between mother and daughter can be uniquely intense, especially when it comes to the relationship between 103-year-old Irène and her daughter Yvette, aged 62 and with a mental disability. They have lived together for years in a Belgian care-home, but are having to face up to the fact they have to refashion their relationship when their health begins to fail.
But, despite everything, Marie De Hert and Ellen Pollard’s engaging documentary Bye Mom (Dag Ma) offers lovely moments of humour alongside its sadder elements, and also pays heart-warming tribute to the care workers and support staff who make the unlikely couple’s life as easy as possible.
Irène is also the great-aunt of co-director Ellen Pollard, which helps offer a tender insight into the story. Mother and daughter have hardly spent a day apart and the authorities want to try and find a way to help make Yvette – who likes rituals and order – more independent from her mother, given the latter’s age and declining health. The film goes back a year to follow their modest, but moving, journey together.
In the care home Yvette has her own room, but first thing every morning she heads off to find her wheel-chair bound mother. They do everything together – sit and eat, amble around the home’s corridors, watch television and wait for the next meal. All of this is slightly hampered by the fact both have hearing aids and have issues communicating at the best of times.
Irène has been in the care home since she was 81, and says about Yvette, “she’s always been right next to me. Not a step away.” Yvette has the mental age of a six or seven-year-old, but is fit and healthy (apart from her hearing) and keen to walk, exercise and be the one pushing her mother’s wheelchair. Pollard’s own mother used to visit the nursing home regularly, and eventually started taking care of Yvette and Irène.
There is an eventual realisation that it is best that Irène is moved to another home to be looked after, but also that Yvette needs to have more space to become a little more self-reliant. Though a modest journey, it is also a challenging one for Yvette, who often bursts into tears. Her mother is far more stoical – she celebrates her 103 birthday in front of the cameras, and adds that she’ll be back next year for her 104th – as the pair are gently parted. Yvette still gets to see her mother regularly, but for the first time she is not just a few yards away.
The film is a delicate and often moving story of motherly love and the dawning reality of having to say goodbye. The pair are forced to reinvent their gently shifting relationship as the roles of mother and daughter are reversed for the first time. Marie De Her and Ellen Pollard’s film is made with genuine compassion and dignity, with their ever-present camera slowly becoming part of Yvette and Irène’s life but never intruding or exploiting them. Bye Mom is, in essence, a charming mother-and-daughter love story.
Belgium, 2023, 72mins
Dirs: Marie De Hert, Ellen Pollard
Production: Borgerhoff & Lamberigts Tv, Poolhert Productions
Producer: Ilse Schooneknaep, Isabelle Baelle
Scr: Ellen Pollard, Marie De Hert
Cinematography/Editor: Ellen Pollard
Music: Aiko Devriendt
With: Yvette Verschoren, Irène Wuyts, An Wuyts, Ilse Laplasse, Jan Van Houdt, France Devos
