Echoes of reality
Memories of his own childhood colour director Anthony Chen's Cannes award-winning film
Twenty-nine-year-old director-scriptwriter Anthony Chen made history at the Cannes Film Festival this year when his Ilo Ilo came away with the coveted Caméra d'Or prize for best first feature film.
In his acceptance speech, the Singaporean was unable to conceal his pride at his achievement, which has a personal dimension but also a national one: his award is the first major honour bestowed by Cannes upon a filmmaker from the city state.
If you understand universal human emotions, you can make films anywhere
Chen made his Cannes debut in 2007 with Ah Ma (Grandma), a short film about a family gathered at the deathbed of a beloved grandmother; the film received a special mention. Ilo Ilo also looks at family relations, depicting the outburst of tensions, deceptions and expectations in the Lim household, especially after newly hired Filipino maid Teresa (aka "Auntie Terry") starts to form a bond with Jiale, the mischievous youngest member of the family.
Sensitive and emotionally complex, Ilo Ilo has some basis in reality: the film was inspired in large part by Teresita Sajonia, who worked for Chen's family. "A few years ago, my childhood memories started to come back to me. I began to remember … my maid, who was with us for eight years. Her name was Teresita, and we called her Auntie Terry. She left when I was 12," the filmmaker says.
"Iloilo was the name of the place she was from in the Philippines. That's where the title of the film came from. Her departure was painful and upsetting. But then, somehow, things went back to normal again. Today I ask myself, how did I just go on living life as if nothing had happened? Deep inside me, there was still an emotion, that confusing sense of losing family."
Set against the background of the Asian financial crisis in the late 1990s, Ilo Ilo also shows how such events affect people's lives and behaviour. The film's four main characters - mother, father, young son and maid - are all under pressure. Within the environments in which they regularly spend many hours - the office, the school, at home - they feel they are being watched and judged by others.