Ilo Ilo

Dir: Anthony Chen

2013

***

Anthony Chen’s debut features opened to global acclaim but I found there was a lot to dislike about as much as there was to enjoy. Literally translated as "Mum and Dad Are Not Home”, IIo IIo won the 2013 Caméra d'Or award, becoming the first Singaporean feature film to win an award at the Cannes Film Festival. I can’t think of a Singaporean film worthy of the award made before 2013 but I can think of a few made since, so I believe the country’s film industry owes a lot of gratitude to Chen’s debut. The story is set in Singapore during the 1997 Asian financial crisis, and chronicles the Lim family as they adjust to their newly arrived Filipina domestic helper, Teresa, (Angeli Bayani) who has come, like many other Filipinas, in search of a better life. The father, Teck, (Chen Tianwen) works in sales for a glass company, his pregnant wife, Hwee Leng, (Yeo Yann Yann) works as a secretary for a shipping company that is down sizing, and their ten-year-old son, Jiale, (Koh Jia Ler) is a troubled delinquent. Hwee is a ‘westernized snob’ in her husband’s own words and her treatment of Teresa is quite uncomfortable. Teresa and Jiale are both shocked to learn that both have to share a room. At first, Jiale and Teresa (known as 'Terry') exhibit a troubled relationship, when during a trip to the bookshop Jiale places some unpaid merchandise in the maid's shopping bag causing her to be accused of theft. After being scolded by Terry, tensions rise, causing Jiale to climb over the school fence at dismissal just to avoid his maid. He runs home and locks her out of the apartment. When Teck loses his sales job, he conceals it from his wife, secretly smoking on the steps outside their apartment. After some time, unable to find work in a career position, he accepts a temporary job as a security guard monitoring an egg farm. As he continues to lose money in the stock market, in a moment of depression, he acknowledges their losses to his wife who lambasts him over his failure. As the family finances begin to descend deeper, familial tensions grow as Jiale continues to act out against his family and Terry. Upon the death of a neighbour who jumps from the roof of their apartment building, Jiale and Terry begin to kindle a relationship. While the mother is desperate to stay employed as she continues to script termination letters at her job, Terry and Jiale become fast friends sparking the mother's jealousy as their relationship develops. Desperate at home, and emotionally neglected by her son, Hwee Leng attends a motivational seminar where she is moved by the optimistic words of the speaker and immediately purchases his full catalogue of motivational books and CDs. During a lunch break at work, she attempts to call the speaker using a phone number included on the seminar's flyer, and discovers the line has been disconnected and rerouted. Later that night while watching television, she learns that the motivational speaker has been arrested for fraud causing Hwee Lang to break down in the presence of her confused husband as more money is lost. Although Jiale is a poor student and is constantly in trouble, he shows high intellect and cunning in his obsessive calculation of past winning lottery numbers, which he catalogues in his schoolbook during class. One day, after being taunted by another boy that his maid only loves him because she is paid to, he pushes the boy into the bathroom wall causing him to split his head and bleed. Threatened with expulsion, and the school's administration unable to contact his parents, Terry arrives to plead for mercy on his behalf. After some resistance, the principal appears moved as Hwee Leng arrives angrily dispatching Terry and berating Jiale. As Hwee Leng and Jiale leave the administration office, Hwee Leng aggressively reminds Terry that she is Jiale's mother before snatching Jiale and walking away. Given a punishment of public caning rather than expulsion, Terry arrives to the school auditorium, powerless, as she watches Jiale being whipped in front of the student body. After the family car is sold for scrap, the family acknowledges they can no longer afford to keep Terry employed as Jiale's father has been recently fired from his job due to an accident tripping over eggs while attempting to find a suspected intruder. Desperate to keep Terry, Jiale uses his savings to purchase lottery tickets but loses. He becomes tearfully despondent, cutting a lock of Terry's hair during a tense goodbye before she is sent home. Holding on to his cassette player, Jiale listens to music with his father on a bench in the hospital as Hwee Leng gives birth to a baby girl. In a rather personal moment, we actually see actor Yeo Yann Yann give birth to the baby she had been carrying through filming. On the whole I ended up liking IIo IIo on reflection but I found that a lot of the content seemed to be lost in translation and the boy – who is supposed to be annoying – is annoying to the point where I found it hard to watch. I thought they got the 90s look rather well and I did like the mother and father – even though I felt their performances were a little forced at times. It was fascinating to see how the Filipinos were treated by the Singaporeans back in the day and I thought Angeli Bayani carried the film well, but I suppose as annoying as he was (and was meant to be), the film belonged to young Koh Jia Ler. I just wonder whether that was really him or if he was in fact acting.