He was mostly happy but knew the situation him and his mother were in was not fantastic.
His jumper was dirty, he fought with his friends, he didn’t want to get into trouble even though he always did. Gordon, the young child in the film, appeared just as any boy in tales of the past does. The colour palette for this film transported us back in time, with creams and sage greens, linking this with the shadows and darkness of the hostel, we could see just how these people felt by the places they were. Instead, I felt knowing that no matter how low they felt in society, there was always a light at the end of the tunnel. This film had a sad air about it, but the second half of the story didn’t leave me feeling low and without hope for the people involved.
We are introduced to Gordon (played by Austin Taylor), a young boy who lives in a secretive Catholic hostel with his mother, waiting for the moment he’ll meet his father. Based on a book of the same name, Secret Child dives into the true story of single mothers and their children in Dublin during the 1950s.
