Popular reviews

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  Review by waiyanaung ★★★★

  The movie of simplicity, showcase of life, it's struggles and the humanities that come along with it, Ilo Ilo is deeply intimate and reflective movie and also serves as snapshot of Singapore during economic crisis in the late 20th Century. As we follow three family members and their Filipino maid through their different stories it never become boring and more so without resorting to being dramatic it goes into some heavy corners like: unemployment, depression and immigration. This is very calm movie and has no plot (but not exactly in the style of Ozu either) and I like it, that is life! Everything we are feeling, witnessing and going through are in the middle of the birth and death and then comes some people like Terry who we met and spent some time with and left a little of them in all of us. Beautiful, sincere and authentic work here.

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  Review by nick ★★★★★

  Broke my heart into a million pieces. Ilo Ilo is a quiet storm that perfectly captures both the beauty and cruelty of childhood, and just like Edward Yang's Yi Yi, it manages to achieve so in the most ingeniously micro, restrained ways possible.

  Ilo Ilo has its unique way of presenting from the smallest cutpoints the suffocating experiences of a regular Singaporean family suffering from both the 1997 Asian economic crisis and troubles from within. Director Anthony Chen's understanding of his people and culture enables him to dive deep into a microscopic scenario that examines the loneliness, anxiety and depression of modern urban dwellers, especially children, who are most receptive to the complexity of the adult world, and the inclusion…

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  Review by Graham Williamson ★★★★ 3

  Part of 30 Countries in 30 Days. Today: Singapore!

  David Lynch once said that, when he first saw Werner Herzog's Stroszek on TV, he thought it was a documentary. I had a similar feeling watching Anthony Chen's thoughtful, tender debut about a Filipino maid working for a middle-class Singaporean family. It's about more than just hand-held camerawork; literally nothing for the duration of Ilo Ilo feels set up, even the material that logically must have been.

  I'm sure for a Singaporean audience there is a lot of material here about national attitudes towards class, immigration, labour and race that sailed over my head; I sometimes find my lack of knowledge about the politics and history of Asian countries gets in…

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  Review by Darren Carver-Balsiger ★★★½

  Ilo Ilo is a story driven by economic anxiety. While it is about complacent lives and intimate emotional moments, it mostly plays as a film about how economic anxiety can affect a family and their mental state. Set during the 1997 Asian financial crisis, a family starts to fall apart. A lot of small accidents and misunderstandings congregate, until larger misfortune manifests. The story centres on a Filipina maid, moving to Singapore to find a better life and earn more money. Angeli Bayani, known for her roles in the films of Lav Diaz, gives an impressive and moving lead performance, as a woman struggling in a world of domestic tension. Her character feels imprisoned, with her passport taken and her…

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  Review by William Li ★★★★½ 7

  I don't like how good this movie is.

  My reasons for this claim are nationalistic in nature. A while back I went down a rabbit hole of Malaysian cinema only to be responded with diminishing returns, and now here comes a Singaporean film that basically flexes all over my country's film industry.

  I don't like how good this movie is, because it highlights how bad it's neighbor's movies are.

  Ilo Ilo's plot is nothing groundbreaking, but it has this nuance only found in the culture I am intimately familiar with that resonated deep within me. In fact, this movie was so good in achieving a sense of realism, and with the failings of the Malaysian movies I saw still there…

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  Review by Valerie Orbach ★★★½ 2

  Ilo Ilo, a film from Singapore, has received a lot of attention in the recent past. It won a major award at Cannes, so that probably has a lot to do with it. It's a debut feature of Anthony Chen, after a few shorts, and it's fairly strong if slightly overrated one. The film is most fascinating for depicting the effects of the financial crisis of the late 90s. It also works as a portrait of a family on the brink and as a coming-of-age story.

  The film details the relationship between the Lim family and their newly arrived maid, Teresa. Like many other Filipino women, she has come to this city in search of a better life. Her presence…

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  Review by TajLV ★★★½ 2

  Writer-director Anthony Chen's feature debut wowed audiences at Cannes and across Asia in 2013. It's a character-driven story about a Singaporean couple (Yann Yann Yeo & Tian Wen Chen), their seven-year-old boy (Jialer Koh) and the Filipina maid who comes to live with them (Angeli Bayani).

  Set during Asia's economic decline of the late 20th century, the film is based upon Chen's own experiences and shows the effects of financial trouble on the family. It also focuses on the special relationship that develops between the maid and the boy when both parents have to work to make ends meet. The fact that the mother is pregnant only adds to the problems, and the maid's own infant back in the Philippines requires…

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  Review by DamRibeiro ★★★½ 6

  Mesmo sendo uma estreia modesta em seu primeiro longa Anthony Chen já trabalhava de forma magnífica a fragilidade das relações humanas, Teresa uma filipina recém chegada a Singapura se torna empregada da família Lim é fica responsável por cuidar do pequeno Jiale do qual ele não esconde que detesto essa ideia, por ver ela como uma intrusa em sua família Jiale torna os dias dessa empregada um verdadeiro inferno onde apronta é faz coisas bem maldosas com a pobi, porém dentro dessa guerra criada entre ambos surge um espaço para entender é abraçar as fragilidades um do outro, de forma sensível os dois se ligam é criam uma relação profunda é afetuosa, é isso que eu adoro nos filmes do…

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  Review by chuzen ★★★★ 6

  i was born in iloilo, and i wanted to be the one to name a film iloilo, so when i read about this when it was released, i was very suspicious - how could a non-filipino make a film with this title - how arrogant i thought.  i still think the original title (according to wiki, the chines title translates to mom and dad are not home) should have been used, and if he wanted to honor his maid growing up, idk - name the film after her?  but these are just minor quibbles because this is a good film.  hey, i can still make a film called iloilo story, right?

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  Review by nat ★★★★

  I've lived in Singapore all of my life, and for as long as I've lived here I've had a domestic helper. Growing up and becoming more conscious of the moral and emotional complexity of having someone relying on your family, living in your house, caring for you but being an employee at the end of the day, was always a turbulent experience. I love art for its ability to crystallize emotions I had but could not put into words, and this film did just that. Gorgeously specific, seeing the singlish translated in the subtitles was surreal and lovely. Adored this understatement, Edward Yang-esque, distinctly Singaporean film very much.

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  Review by 🇵🇱 Steve G 🐝 ★★ 9

  World Tour 2021

  The World Is More Than Enough 9: At The Mubis

  12/30 - Singapore

  Look. I would never call myself an apologist for American cinema, but I have to ask a question.

  If Ilo Ilo had been an American film and one of its subplots had been a troubled schoolboy connecting with a disciplinarian teacher by correctly predicting lottery numbers for him, don't you think there's a chance that there would have been a smattering of extremely negative reviews of it on Letterboxd.com?

  It was a real "Oh come ON!" moment, for me, and I've not had one of those for quite a while. In fairness, Ilo Ilo had done little to get me on its side up…

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  Review by ivyivyivy_ ★★★

  there is no room for god here