CINEVUE: Singaporean director Anthony Chen (HOTEL 66, AAIFF’11) surprised the world with his feature debut ILO ILO (2013), when it won Camera d’Or at Cannes last year and swept the Taipei Golden Horse Awards to win the Best Picture (against all the other big-name nominees including Wong Kar-wai’s THE GRANDMASTER, Tsai Ming-liang’s STRAY DOGS, Jia Zhangke’s A TOUCH OF SIN and Johnnie To’s DRUG WAR.) CINEVUE sits down with Anthony to talk about this film, his creative process, and the many happy surprises that he has embraced along the way.
ILO ILO (2013) opens on Friday April 4th at Film Society Lincoln Center and Cinema Village. To learn more about the film read the CINEVUE REVIEW.
CINEVUE: After winning at Cannes you were quite nervous about the reaction to the film in Singapore. You mentioned that the Singaporean audience were more inclined to see comedies and genre films. How has it been received since it hit theaters in Singapore?
ANTHONY CHEN: We are very happy with the amount of support from the Singaporean audience towards ILO ILO. Since its theatrical release, the film has become the best-selling arthouse film in the history of Singaporean cinema. Among all the films shown in Singapore last year, ILO ILO was the top third in box office and it actually had the longest theatrical run. So it was quite a success.
CV: The film won Camera d’Or award at Cannes and won Best Picture at the Golden Horse Awards. How did it help the box office?
CHEN: Winning the top prize for up-and-coming filmmakers at Cannes made people curious about the film. The win at the Golden Horse Awards was another huge boost to the box office, because the general audience were in fact more familiar with the Golden Horse. In Singapore, except for film-related researchers and intellectuals, not many people would have a clear idea of what winning at Cannes means. But most of them, especially the mid-aged uncles and aunts, grew up watching the annual Golden Horse and know that this is a very high honor in the Chinese-language film world. That became a major drive for them to go see the film.
CV: You have been trained on filmmaking since very young. Then you went to London for further film education. How would you compare the two film cultures?
CHEN: I went to Ngee Ann Polytechnic at the age of 17. My early foundation of filmmaking and film appreciation all came from Asian films, including those by Ozu, the Taiwan New Wave directors such as Hou Hsiao-hsien, Edward Yang and Ang Lee, and of course the Fifth Generation Chinese directors Zhang Yimou and Chen Kaige. Later on, I also studied European films, including the French New Wave. I think it is hard to describe my film’s atmosphere or my style. Europeans have commented that my film has a typical Asian flavor; but many Asians would say that they sense European cinema in it. It is just too early to analyze my film’s style. It would be better to find out where it has come from ten or twenty years later. I grew up in Singapore, where the East meets the West. We were the British colony and are educated in English since little. Yet there is a considerable presence of the Chinese community here, so it is a mix.
CV: It took extremely long time and incredible resilience to finish this film, from casting to mounting a sense of the 90s to the art direction. If the project had been conceived in a highly industrialized system, a lot of people would advise against filming with little budget. I feel the film is really something that survived in the hiatus.
CHEN: We took nine months to audition for the role of Jiale, visiting different schools endlessly. And to find the right apartment we also did an extensive scout. I think it is all thanks to my stubbornness and headstrongness. I had to make sure that I had got it right, be it a flavor, a color, or a piece of acting, before moving on. I never compromise once I have an ideal of what I want. My wife thinks it is because my astrological sign is Ariel.
CV: In order to make this film you have received great support from a lot of people, including the Ngee Ann Polytechnic that for the first time supported an alumnus’ work. That is very nice.
CHEN: The credits should go to some key crew on the team who were very willing to defend your vision and to make demands for you, so as to achieve what you wanted to express and the style you wanted to achieve. To be honest, when I was filming, I don’t think everyone on the crew knew what I was actually doing. A lot of people were wondering why I wanted to make such a boring, unexciting story. A story about a Filipino maid and a small kid, that is too small-scaled, unattractive, and insignificant. A lot of friends in the industry tried to convince me to do a more sensational story.
CV: But the film is actually infused with tension and unstated conflicts in life.
CHEN: Many on the set were not able to sense it or imagine what it could be during the process. Between the coral crew and the general crew, there was a gap in terms of film appreciation and the ability to imagine the style and ambience of the final product. But the firm support from such people as my cinematographer, assistant director and editor was a relief. They believed in my vision and knew what I had in mind. What is important that you have a few people on the team to defend you, to protect you, and to fight for you.
CV: Could you talk about your cinematographer Benoit Soler?
CHEN: He is French. We have collaborated on three films so far. At the National Film and Television School in London I studied directing, he cinematography. We started to work together since then and have collaborated in a congruous mode. I really enjoy working with him.
CV: The film has autobiographical elements but more of it fictionalizes or reinvents the details of your childhood. Do you think it is harder or more convenient to have autobiographical reference in the story?
CHEN: The real life is not dramatic and does not have the structure of a story (which includes the starting, development, turning point and conclusion). When I was developing the script, I thought hard on how to capture the objects, the characters and the memories, and how to glue them together for the metaphors and poetry to emerge. I raised chicken when I was little. When the chicken grew up, my maid did kill and cooked them. That is how brutal it was in my childhood. I also played the Tamagotchis egg, and my mom did bring KFC chicken home for my birthday. I ended up threading these unrelated episodes in my memory.
CV:The film also makes people rethink the definition of a family. Is it all about the familial bond? Or is it the degree of intimacy between individuals, or the engagement in each other’s life? The interaction between Jiale and Terry is also very complicated. It is a semi-mother-son relationship, and at the same time, it is also the beginning of the cognition sexes. How did you navigate these aspects?
CHEN: The initial inspiration was again from the memory. My Filipino maid had been working in our family for 8 years. When she came I was 8. When she left I was 12. I remembered that when she started to board the plane to leave the country I cried very hard. It was such a profoundly besetting and painful sorrow felt for the farewell of a close family. But I forgot about it for quite a while, as I was busy growing up. But when I started to write the scrip, this emotional experience came back to me and made me to think what it means to be a family.
I always develop the plot according to the inherent logic of the character. I would not deliberately design a plot to explicate the personalities and behaviors. Instead, I would follow my observations of the character, the society, females and children, or would immerse myself in and re-embrace a memory. By doing this I could gradually bring out the details and emotions in the interactions. In the middle of writing the screenplay I had no idea where I would be lead to, or how the story would end.
CV: But what is consistent throughout the film is the tension between Hwee Leng, the mother, and Teresa, the maid. How did you achieve this?
CHEN: When I was invited to the stage for a Q & A at Cannes, the audience was surprised. They were surprised by two things: one, how come the director did such a mature story at such a young age; second, how come the director could capture the emotions of females so accurately and delicately without being a woman himself. I don’t know how to answer them. Maybe I am just naturally understanding of the state and thoughts of females. My wife would not agree with it though. She always complains that I don’t understand her enough. I always say: “It is because that I know you too well that I am not giving you what you want.”
CV: I do think it has something to do with the backstories of the characters. The backgrounds of the mother and Terry are sort of suggestive as they represent two distinct classes and nationalities – a local middle-class (Chinese) clerk and a foreign (Filipino) worker.
CHEN: The issue of the foreign labors has emerged in the many countries, including Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore. There is an increasing amount of discussion around it as well. However, I didn’t want to use the factual difference in their ethnicities or classes to strike a stark contrast. I have been very careful. I didn’t hold a one-sided judgment on any of the characters when I present them. There are no simply good guys and bad guys in my story. Everyone has their flaws and imperfection and is somewhere in a grey area. This is very important to me. These characters are all human beings who struggle to do the right thing but find themselves in a lost cause.
CV: Do you think it helps to look from the present point back at the 90s for you to better understand the predicaments in people’s life and in the society at large?
CHEN: Although the film is set in the 90s, it resonates with people today, especially on the topics of growing up, family, foreign labor, class, economic conditions, etc. Despite the sixteen or seventeen years in between, the story feels very current to the Singaporean society today.
Singapore has changed too quickly. If I had been told to do a story about contemporary Singapore for my first feature, I might have been scared off. Things here change before you could see it clearly. So you need time, like five to ten years, for the floating parts to land and then emerge. For this film, I really teased out a lot of things that could have been otherwise obscure to me. Since I have been abroad for quite some years, I am not confident enough to capture the current Singapore. So much change has happened in Singapore, the immigrants’ demographics, the societal structure, the gap in wealth, everything. It all has changed very quickly.
CV: The last sequence delivery, it was all shot in real life?
CHEN: Yes it was the real scene of Yeo Yann Yann’s delivery in 2012, when she gave birth to her daughter.
CV: Was it the original ending to the script?
CHEN: Actually when I first heard that she was pregnant I wanted to flunk her. I wanted to find another actress. But there was no on better than she was for this character. I had a long conversation with her and revised the script to what it is now. In the original version of the screenplay, the mother was not expecting; instead she was sterile. But now I made the mother character a pregnant woman. This is what I said to her: “That you are pregnant is a real bomb you dropped at me. Now I am throwing one back to you. I will go to the delivery room to shoot your delivery.” She agreed. Looking back, I am grateful.
CV: Did it change the tone of the film? This ending, with a new life coming to the world, constitutes a contrast with the brutality inside the story. Is it a happy surprise?
CHEN: It has really changed my idea of filmmaking – we as directors are control freaks. We need to control the screenplay, the acting, cameras, everything. But while we wanted to keep the level of control so as to achieve what we want, we also need to open our eyes and embrace whatever may come our way. If I had changed the actor, if I had switched Yann Yann out, if I had not tried to imagine how the whole story would change with her pregnancy, if I had not embraced this surprise, ILO ILO wouldn’t have become what it is now.
CV: Here I am misquoting Jia Zhangke -but isn’t it, in this case, life that teaches you to believe in films?
CHEN: I think 80% of it still depends on control. The rest 20% asks you to open your eyes and you mind to see and to feel. Because very often you will receive a lot of surprises not only on the set as well as from people just around you. This surprise is the so-called cinematic magic. It is a miracle, which will infuse life and add a different layer of meaning to your film.
Interview questions were partly drafted by Miranda Hsiu-an Wan. The interview was conducted by Lesley Yiping Qin.