Ilo Ilo is set in Singapore in the late nineties, during the onset of the Asian financial crisis. It employs the economic situation as a pressure cooker that unravels a family. Leng (Yann Yann Yeo) is having trouble taking care of her mischievous ten year-old son Jiale (Koh Jia Ler). She hires Filipina Teresa (Angeli Bayani) as a maid, much to the dismay of her son. Jiale is determined to make things difficult for Teresa, but she sticks it out and eventually wins him over. She grows closer to Jiale as money troubles threaten to tear the family apart.
That is the extent of the plot. Ilo Ilo doesn’t really have much of a story. What it offers instead is a collection of carefully observed moments, capturing a very specific yet oddly familiar slice of life. It seems to draw from a personal well of memory, and it uses that to craft this very vivid picture of four lives in a very particular time and place. Singapore in the 1990s comes alive in this picture, and the film invites audiences to linger in the details of the setting.
The film avoids any sort of traditional dramatic arc. One might imagine that the film is about how Teresa wins Jiale over. Or that it might be specifically about the conflict that grows between her and Leng. But it isn’t. The film refuses to be about anything other than the depiction of this situation, a situation that’s probably all too common in Singapore. The Chinese title of the film translates to “Mom and Dad are not home,” and that pretty much sums it up. The film is practically just the statement of a fact, exploring every facet of the consequences that the fact brings.
The film builds on that inherent tragedy: households bringing in strangers to raise their kids, families unable to really communicate with each other. It lets things stay small and naturalistic. The film even avoids the use of non-diagetic music. It just lets one thing lead to another, slowly filling in the details of this complex situation. And it reveals no real good guys or bad guys. Just human beings, all trying to deal with problems of their own, unsure of their own choices.
The acting plays a big part in forming this picture. This cast makes a lot of smart choices in playing this family. Yann Yann Yeo embodies the steely matriarch, making her mounting frustration over her lack of fulfillment palpable in every frame. Tian Wen Chen is equally great as Teck, the put upon father who has all but given up on being the man everyone expects him to be. Angeli Bayani has always brought an appealing naturalism to her roles. She does no different here. And Koh Jah Ler is fantastic as Jiale. Most child actors tend to settle for being precocious. There’s something deeper in his performance, finding the deep sadness and loneliness that fuels his behavior.
Ilo Ilo is quite a lovely film, though its approach does have its drawbacks. It sometimes feels like the film loses its focus as it chases down even more details to complete this picture. It might have actually been more interesting to keep Teresa more of an enigma, to make her hidden life completely unknown, as it is to the family that she kind of belongs to. But this is a minor quibble in the end. The portrait of life it paints is so vivid that one can’t help but be drawn in. This is a movie that really deserves to be seen.
My Rating:
