Ilo Ilo

This movie captures the atmosphere of the end of the 90's in Singapore, when an economic tsunami devastated much of Asia, through the memories of a 10-year old.

When Antony Chen was looking for a subject for his first feature film, he recorded an event of his childhood that he had since nearly erased from this memory: how he was heartbroken when the Filipino maid who was living with his family had to leave, following his mother's decision to stay at home to tend to the family. From there, vignettes of the past came back to him, that he sought to transcribe them in the movie in the most authentic manner possible.

Antony Chen pushed that search for authenticity pretty far, as to find Ko Jia Le (the boy playing the central part), he trawled schools seeing some 2000 boys, interviewing hundreds, and inviting a hundred of them to do workshops. The result was not to take the cutest or the best-looking - something the director wanted to avoid - in fact you often feel ill at ease watching him, playing obsessively with him Tamagochi (remember those?) or making a nuisance of himself in all sorts of ways. You love him and you hate him, was the director's comment, and shooting the movie appears never to have been easy. "There were two children on the set, one in front of the camera, one behind", reminisced Chen. The embarrassment you feel watching him is a compounded by that caused by the tensions between the characters, sometimes so painful and so real that you wonder what you are doing there watching them.

The period of the film is, in 2013, highly unusual: nobody to my knowledge has yet set an entire film in the 1990's. But none of the usual tricks to show the audience the period: no camera lingering on a period calendar, no newsreels announcing events identifiable with the period. Part of the time you forget about it, and get reminded by an audio cassette or an electronic typewriter.

The movie is upheld by a brilliant cast of very eclectic actors. Chen Tian Wen (the father) comes from Singapore TV soap operas, Angeli Bayani is Filipino and worked in the Philippines in theater and in movies. The fact that the mother (Yann Yann Yeo), was really 6-month pregnant during the shooting, adds humanity to a character who would otherwise appear excessively domineering. The art director is French, met by Chen in the London school of cinema. Chen expressed how he had fears that being a westerner he would show a romantic view of Singapore, something like Woody Allen in Paris, which would have gone against his search for authenticity. The shooting does avoid any romanticism but remains highly interesting, occasionally tripping into a dreamlike quality at odds with the rest of the movie.

In short, this is a movie like none other.

This is a lovely little movie. A precursor to Roma. One wonders if it influenced Roma. Like Roma, it deals with the life of a maid deep in the family circle of an ordinary family in Singapore.

This is a heartwarming and deeply realistic insight into life in Singapore in the 90s and the harsh life of so many Philippina working as housemaids across the world.

Some terrific acting from a great cast.

The movie could have been a little shorter, otherwise I would have given it a 10.

Well worth a watch.

Director Anthony Chen's brilliant debut feature film 'Ilo Ilo' is a compelling drama about how a simple Singaporean middle-class family gets affected by the Asian Financial Crisis of 1997.

'Ilo ilo' is a Mandarin phrase which means 'Mom and dad are not at home'. The setting itself was quite nostalgic, personally. A simple middle-class family, two hardworking parents, a naughty son, and how he gets attached to the new Filipino maid hired by the family. Everything goes normal until the financial crisis hits the community; people start losing their jobs, and we see its effects on the community through the lives of these four characters.

All the characters in the story are quite intriguing: The honest hardworking father, who after losing his sales job, tries to hide it from his family and applies for other jobs. The pregnant working mother, who's always irritated by her naughty son's antics at school, but feels jealous when she notices the close bond her son forms with the maid. The single child, Jiale, who's known for his naughtiness, but slowly mends his ways when he finds a friend in the new maid. The Filipino-immigrant maid, who has a baby of her own (back at her sister's house), but stays and works at this house, and also does hairdressing part-time, trying to make ends meet; she finds a son in Jiale, and starts caring about him immensely.

Even when situations get really bad, we as people often try to mask our pain and difficulties in front of our friends and relatives in order to appear fine and sorted; that's what seems sad in our communities. The urge and need to maintain our image takes precedence over anything else.

All the four leads are really talented actors, and have done a commendable job. The cinematography and the crisp colours make the story quite rich and real. The screenplay is simple and uncomplicated, yet immensely moving and absorbing. And the most beautiful aspect of the movie is that there is no background score at all. Instead, the silence lets us ponder over the real and moving situations unraveling in front of our eyes. The only song in the movie is played in the last scene, and it's a really beautiful Filipino song.

There are many beautifully shot and memorable scenes in the movie. By the time the movie ends, you unconsciously become a part of the family, and empathise with each of the four characters.

Ilo Ilo tells a deceptively simple story with a lot of care and heart.The film is roughly set in the middle of the Asian financial crisis which also affected this small island nation.It tells of a friendship which grows between a young and rebellious boy who has just lost his beloved grandfather and his maid who arrives from Philippines to help his pregnant mother with her hectic schedule. The boys father loses his job and his mother juggles the tantrums of the brat and the increasing demands of her job which she needs to retain at all cost.

Ilo Ilo demonstrates that the role of a nanny and domestic servant is very special.The tightrope that both employer and employee walk in balancing "you are a paid servant" and " you are a part of the family" can be so tight and the casualties so subtle that we don't notice the injuries until much later.In a dramatic scene, the school bully teases Jialer that his maid does not actually love him, she is just doing a job for which she is paid.This infuriates Jailer who lunges at the bully in a fit of rage. The director says the film was based on his personal experiences and how he felt that its very cruel for parents to allow maids to become like surrogate mothers and suddenly sack the maid for some reason.This can be a huge emotional trauma for the child who is unable to appreciate the reasons.While the film does not indict the system of foreign domestic helpers, it frames its argument for considering the human cost involved in a gentle way.

The character of Teresa reminds us that those of us who were raised by nannies owe so much to them, and we often never acknowledge the debt fully.I completely admired the performance by Yan Yan Yeo who played Jailan's mother as the slightly humorless but ultimately kind woman.She navigates the role with the responsibility that the character must have felt, with her world crumbling around her in trying circumstances. Her performance is pitch perfect and I was amazed to know that her character was not conceived as being pregnant but after she was cast she became pregnant.She managed to convince the director to rewrite the role.Angela Bayani as the diminutive maid Teresa also delivers a stellar performance in a role that requires her to be vulnerable, strong, emotional, stoic and pragmatic at different points.Her chemistry with Jialer played by a very natural Koh Jia Ler is excellent and completely believable.

The beauty of this film emerges when we juxtapose its sombre sepia images with the glitz and glamour of present day Singapore.Needless to say the intimate and de-glamorized cinematography by French lensman Benoit Soler plays a big role in creating this magic.The humour is one of the strengths of the film and although I may not have understood all the jokes about growing up in Singapore, going by the reaction of the audience Mr Chen has been successful in his efforts.Yes I did go in with very high expectations and the film did not meet all of them but that should not take anything away from this sweet and intimate film.The quality of the craft is impeccable and there are no rough edges in the film which is remarkable for a debutant director.

I recently saw another period Singapore film – That Girl in Pinafore, which although not as elegant as Ilo Ilo tells an equally touching and boisterous tale of a group of teens being typical teens against the backdrop in xinyao music.These are the only two Singaporean films I have seen so far, but we foreigners who live in Singapore need to discover Singaporean cinema, which offers a window into its unique culture.

Anthony Chen is the new poster boy of the fledgling film industry of Singapore after winning the Camera d'or at Cannes this year.This is his first full length feature after making eight highly acclaimed short films. Ilo Ilo is certainly a glittering debut film and hopefully the first in a long and interesting career.It may be Singapore's first Cannes winner but there must have been better films which have not garnered this kind of limelight.One hopes that Ilo Ilo is a watershed moment in Singapore cinema.

'Ilo Ilo's' Camera d'Or win made history by being the highest ever honour that any Singapore film has won; but further history might be in the making. Indeed, last year's movie - Benh Zeitlin's 'Beasts of the Southern Wild' - went on to be nominated four times at the Academy Awards, and Anthony Chen's debut feature-length film may very well score Singapore's first nomination in the extremely competitive Foreign Language Film category.

You might certainly be right in thinking that we may be getting ahead of ourselves if we haven't yet seen the movie, but it is after having enjoyed every rapt minute of it that we are saying with great confidence we have not overstated the potential of this little delicate gem nor the creative force behind it, Chen. Indeed, never will you guess from watching the movie that this is only his first full-length movie, because in 'Ilo Ilo', Chen navigates plot, character and relationship with the deftness of a pro honed from years of experience, crafting an intimate yet broad, bittersweet yet heart-warming portrait of a working- class family caught in the throes of the 1997 Asian financial crisis.

Working off his own screenplay, Chen displays an acute sense of self-awareness and confidence in his own scripting and directing abilities. Whereas lesser directors would have relied on mawkish sentimentality, Chen banks on good old-fashioned character- driven storytelling to draw in his audience. Each scene is carefully written and constructed to establish the relationship between four richly realised characters, with meticulous attention paid to their evolving dynamics as the film progresses.

Yes, ever so gently and effortlessly, Chen hooks you in to empathise with the plight of the Lim family and their Filipino maid from the titular province, which - thanks to the universality of the familial themes - transcends age, generation and even cultures. Certainly, Mr and Mrs Lim (veteran TV actor Chen Tianwen and Malaysian actress Yeo Yann Yann) wouldn't be the first to grapple with an increasingly misbehaved young kid (newcomer Koh Jia Ler), nor - at least in the Singapore context - to hire a maid to take care of their child because both have to work to support the family.

Enter the timid Filipino domestic worker Terry (Angeli Bayani), whom Jiale treats with utter contempt at the start. From purposely sabotaging her at the bookshop to slipping away from the side gate while she waits anxiously to pick him up from school after dismissal, Terry's new job taking care of the wilful Jiale proves to be a baptism of fire, especially as she frets over her infant son whom she had left in the care of her sister back home. While setting up the central relationship between Terry and Jiale, Chen occasionally interweaves the largely parallel circumstances of the remaining two characters - while Mrs Lim gets no joy at work watching her fellow employees get the axe and feeling partly responsible for being the one typing out their termination letters, Mr Lim is in an even worse position, having lost his job and forced to accept a temporary position as a security guard at a warehouse.

What is truly impressive is how Chen develops the story through evolving the dynamics between and among the various characters. A freak accident turns out to be Jiale's wake-up call, marking a turning point in how he treats Terry. But it also causes Mrs Lim to be quietly resentful of Terry, exacerbated by the small incidents like Jiale's preference for "Auntie Terry's" fish porridge over hers. Her jealousy not only makes her more wary of Terry - whom she suspects of smoking and even taking her money - but also aggravates her peckish behaviour over her husband.

Chen's grasp of detail is masterful, every little event ratcheting the tension between mother and maid as well as husband and wife before building to an inevitable conclusion handled with bittersweet restraint. Ditto for his control over the film's tone, which he carefully calibrates to keep things realistic from start to finish, lacing the drama with an undertone of real-life humour. And for those who have been following his short films, this is undoubtedly his paciest film to date, avoiding the long takes and arty pretences to focus on the story and characters.

That he chooses to do so is also testament to the exceptional performances of his cast. In his first big-screen role, Tianwen portrays with nuance and empathy as the hen-pecked husband afraid to tell his wife the truth about his unemployment for fear of losing her respect. Yann Yann is just as solid as his complement, utterly convincing with Tianwen as a couple whose marriage is now defined by the everyday practical concerns of money and children.

Deserving of special and joint mention are Bayani and Jia Ler, who share great chemistry with each other whether as antagonists at the beginning or as each other's guardians later on. It's no secret why Chen had selected Jia Ler out of more than hundreds of hopefuls for the role - the now 13-year-old is a fascinating natural in front of the camera, holding his own amongst the seasoned vets as the feisty kid with an unexpectedly sweet centre. Of course, the credit also belongs to Chen, who reportedly spent take after take coaxing the best out of Jia Ler.

But all that effort has clearly paid off - not only is the acting some of the best we have ever seen in local film, the scripting and directing is among the most accomplished as well. This isn't the sort of mass- appeal movie that Jack Neo makes, nor is it the arty-farty type that speaks only to an acquired taste; rather, Chen has made a perfectly accessible drama that captures an immediately identifiable slice of Singapore life, absolutely fascinating in its authenticity, poignancy and honest-to-god warmth.