Ilo Ilo

I'm no stranger to having two mothers, and I think it is a noble thing for people to go out and take care of the children of strangers, often at the expense of their own selves. In another way, it's tragic: in a world where parents have no time to take care of their children, they have someone do it for them.

Ilo Ilo, Anthony Chen's debut full length feature film, is set in Singapore during the Asian Financial Crisis of the late nineties. Taken from Chen's own childhood experiences (he and his two brothers were in the care of a Filipina domestic helper from Iloilo before she left for health related reasons) Ilo Ilo tells the tale of Jiale and his family. Jiale is a brat: he gets into trouble at school and is pretty much a problem to parents and teachers alike. His father works in sales but gets into work related troubles, and his mother works at a firm who lays off employees at an alarmingly regular rate - she is the one who types the letters of termination. Due to the increasing difficulty of raising a young boy such as Jiale, the mother (Malaysian actress Yeo Yann Yann) decides to hire a maid/nanny, Terry (Angeli Bayani), to take care of the boy. Although they do not get along well at first, Jiale and Terry bond and form a genuine relationship.

Ilo Ilo thrives on small emotional moments. It does not need to spell out every single event in this family's life - it works by implying rather than showing. And these emotions resonate in the viewer, whether it be isolation from family and friends in a faraway place, or the stress of keeping a family afloat in the midst of financial difficulties.

Ilo Ilo goes with simplicity, and it manages to hit the mark. With such an effective storytelling style, the film just works on an emotional level. By the end of the film, you'll be rooting for Jiale (when you would have been annoyed earlier on) and somehow feel the emotional wringer he is going through. But as the closing moments of the film seems to tell us, life goes on regardless. These memories of longing and separation, as painful as they may have been, are what make us into what we are.

As a postscript, thanks to a local radio station Anthony Chen and his brother managed to find the real life Auntie Terry.You can see that despite all those years of separation, this simple woman managed to affect the Chens' life in one way or another.