Ilo Ilo () is a 2013 Singaporean drama film directed and written by Anthony Chen. It is Chen's debut feature film and stars Singaporean actor Chen Tianwen, Malaysian actress Yeo Yann Yann, Filipino actress Angeli Bayani, and first-time child actor Koh Jia Ler. Ilo Ilo revolves around a middle-class Singaporean family who employs a domestic worker from the Philippines at the onset of the 1997 Asian financial crisis.
Chen based the film on his personal experiences in living with a Filipino domestic worker from Iloilo, a province in the Philippines. He ideated for the feature film, which was initially an autobiography, after finishing his studies at the National Film and Television School in England and returning to Singapore. Writing began in June 2010, and filming took place from May to June 2012. The film was partially funded by the Singapore Film Commission, Ngee Ann Polytechnic, and an award from Tokyo Filmex.
Ilo Ilo premiered at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival as part of the Directors' Fortnight on 19 May 2013. The film was awarded the Caméra d'Or award and became the first Singaporean feature film to receive an award at the Cannes Film Festival. This led to a media campaign to locate the overseas Filipino worker Chen had lived with, whom he could identify only by her nickname and two photographs. The film was released in Singapore on 29 August 2013, and generally received positive reception for its storytelling and cast performances. Ilo Ilo became the first Singaporean film to win the Golden Horse Award for Best Feature Film and was selected as the Singaporean entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 86th Academy Awards.
Plot In Singapore during the 1997 Asian financial crisis, the Lim family welcomes their domestic helper Teresa (colloquially Terry). Terry is an overseas Filipino Worker who has come from Iloilo to support her infant son. The father, Teck, works in sales for a glass company; the pregnant mother, Hwee Leng, works as a secretary in a downsizing shipping company; and the ten-year-old son, Jiale, is a troubled delinquent. Jiale and Terry exhibit a troubled relationship at first. One day, Jiale climbs over the school fence at dismissal time just to avoid his maid, who comes every day to fetch him. He is forced to rely on Terry after he accidentally collides with a car while biking, and has to temporarily use an arm cast.
When Teck loses his sales job, he conceals it from his wife. He accepts a temporary job as a security guard monitoring an egg farm. As he continues to lose money in the stock market, he acknowledges their losses to his wife, who lambastes him. Terry also finds a side job at Lucky Plaza as a hairstylist, which she keeps a secret from her employers. Meanwhile, Jiale and Terry begin to kindle a relationship, which sparks his mother's jealousy and feelings of emotional neglect by her son. Teck and Hwee Leng give Jiale pet chicks for his birthday, which are eventually slaughtered. Hwee Leng attends a motivational seminar and is convinced by the optimistic words of the speaker to purchase his merchandise; he turns out to be a fraud.
Jiale is enthusiastic in his collection of past-winning lottery numbers, which he catalogues in his schoolbook. One day, after being taunted by another boy that Terry only loves him as part of her job, he pushes the boy against a bathroom wall, hospitalizing him. Threatened with expulsion and the school's administration unable to contact his parents, Terry arrives to plead for mercy on his behalf. Hwee Leng shows up, reminding Terry that she is Jiale's mother. Later, Jiale is caned in front of the school assembly.
After the family car is sold for scrap and Teck is fired from his job for breaking several crates while chasing a robber, the Lim family acknowledge they can no longer afford to keep Terry employed. Desperate to keep her, Jiale uses his savings to purchase lottery tickets but loses. He becomes despondent and cuts a lock of Terry's hair during a tense farewell at the airport. Holding onto her cassette player, Jiale listens to Terry's favorite song, "Kahapon at Pag-ibig" by Asin, with his father in the hospital as Hwee Leng gives birth to a baby girl.
Cast Chen Tianwen as Teck, the father Yeo Yann Yann as Hwee Leng, the mother Koh Jia Ler as Jiale Angeli Bayani as Teresa “Terry”
Production
Development
Ilo Ilo was directed and written by Anthony Chen. Chen based the film on his personal experiences, particularly his family's Filipino maid referred to as "Aunt Terry". He recalled that his family employed "Terry" from 1988, when he was aged four, to 1997, when he was aged twelve. Chen, who finished his master's degree at the National Film and Television School, decided to create his first feature film and returned to Singapore to "make something personal". While ideating his feature film, he "had these sudden memories of childhood recurring" and wanted to rediscover the emotion he felt in his farewell to "Terry". "Terry" returned to Iloilo, a province in the Philippines, in 1997 during the 1997 Asian financial crisis.
Scriptwriting began on June 2010 and took two to three years. Chen initially wrote Ilo as an autobiographical film, but decided not to after he "became more objective about the material" and thought that an autobiography would not fit in a narrative structure. He revised an initial draft that included Chen's two younger brothers after he "[focused] on the emotions and the characters". The personalities of Chen and the character Jiale contrasted; Chen described that he was "prim and proper [and] probably the one being bullied" in his childhood. While several events and characters were dramatized, some scenes that Chen based on his experience was Teck's termination of employment and the maid's slaughter of Jiale's pet chickens.
Iloilo was the first word Chen wrote while writing for the film, as he recalled that the maid came from Iloilo. He considered 25 titles for the film at first before choosing Ilo Ilo. Chen based the Chinese title on children whose parents both work most of the time. Chen searched for any old Filipino song to use in the closing credits by searching at iTunes, and coincidentally found "Kahapon at Pag-ibig" by Asin. When the production staff inquired the song's rights to its singer Lolita Carbon, she requested a DVD copy of the film. Chen deliberately avoided showing subtitles for the credits song.
Ang Hwee Sim, Anthony Chen, and Wahyuni A. Hadi produced the film. The film's budget is estimated to be around , and was partially funded by Ngee Ann Polytechnic for and the Singapore Film Commission's New Feature Film Fund. Chen also received after the production project won the Tokyo Filmex Next Masters Best Project 2010 award on 28 November.
Pre-production and filming A cheap hotel room served as the audition space for around 30 to 40 women who auditioned for the role of Terry, the Filipino maid. Angeli Bayani, who received the role of Terry, was the last auditionee and arrived from a theatre show. Yeo Yann Yann, who would play as Jiale's mother, had previously worked with Chen in his 2007 short film Ah Ma. Chen had to rewrite the script after Yeo informed him of her pregnancy in December 2011. He also filmed the delivery of Yeo's daughter via a caesarian section for the concluding scene, as the hospital restricted the operating room from relatives. The production staff took ten months to find an actor for Jiale's role. Among 2,000 child auditionees from at least 20 schools, the 150 children selected to be screened in acting workshops for six months was a friend of Koh Jia Ler. Koh, who was rejected for additional screening, received the role after discreetly asking a casting assistant. Koh was caned in two takes with protective pads while shooting a scene.
Filming took place for 27 days from May to June 2012. Filming locations include a five-room flat in Tampines, as well as Jurong and other housing estates. A key sequence where Jiale shows Terry a city skyline, which was used for the film poster, was filmed on a Housing and Development Board (HDB) block at Teban Gardens without permission. Requests to permit filming at building rooftops were rejected by the town council and government agencies, and the crew accidentally found access to the roof. The production staff checked around 500 HDB flats within one month to find a primary filming location. Chen wanted a five-room flat located on the second or third floor with uncoloured tiles and door grills "with oval-ish or rounded rectangles", according to a production assistant. A handheld camera was used for filming.
Themes Ilo Ilo, which is a representation of a middle-class Singaporean family coping with the 1997 Asian financial crisis, is regarded as a film a clef for Chen's motivation to create the film. Arriola argues that Ilo Ilo portrays the centrality of family in Asian societies by showing dynamics within the Lim family and their respectful attitude to Terry, along with Terry's congregation with Filipino domestic workers at Lucky Plaza and support for her family in the Philippines. Characters also represent the theme of identifying with their nationality, which Arriola identifies in scenes where Jiale recites the Singapore National Pledge, and the Lim family respects Terry's Catholic grace as a representation of Singapore's multiculturalism. Several scholars have discussed the difference between the themes emphasized by the Chinese title, which is based on a Cantonese children's song about hospitality, and the English title Ilo Ilo, which indicates Singapore's reliance on foreign labor.
The Philippine government began a labor exportation program in the 1970s to address its high unemployment rate. Meanwhile, Singapore experienced rapid economic development and encouraged the entry of middle-class women, who were traditionally involved in household work, into white-collar professions. To maintain its birth rates, the state introduced the Foreign Maids Scheme in 1978 to begin the import of domestic workers into the country. The decreasing number of local household workers prior to 1997 also led to the demand for foreign domestic workers (FDWs) from countries such as the Philippines, Indonesia, Myanmar, and India. FDWs are prohibited from overstaying their contracts or accepting additional work, which can result in the forfeiture of bond money from employers. The involvement of FDWs in familial lives complicates conventional ideas of family, according to Leow. Cheah compares Hwee Leng to Gayle Rubin's description that a FDW is one of the necessities of a wife for her to be able to work for a postindustrial economy. The 1995 execution of domestic worker Flor Contemplacion also strained diplomacy relations between the Philippines and Singapore, which Piocos attributed depictions of the "abusive 'madam' and the victimized 'maid'" to. Some scholars found the representation of FDWs in Singaporean literature and film as racially stereotyped, or “metonymic of an emerging racialized [...] class system".