When Ilo Ilo won the prestigious Camera d’Or prize at the Cannes Film Festival in May this year, I was pleasantly surprised. This was a film made by a Singaporean film-maker, Anthony Chen (and a Ngee Ann Polytechnic alumnus) – his first feature film about a heartland family living through the 1997 Asian economic crisis with their Filipino maid.
Members of the arts community here and Singaporeans in general, celebrated this win.
Chen’s recent win of four awards including Best Picture and Best New Director at Taiwan’s Golden Horse awards (Chinese moviedom’s equivalent of the Oscars), surprised a few critics including Chen himself.
Some people even called it a turning point for Singapore cinema and film industry.
But is it really?
Don’t get me wrong. I am delighted that a Singapore film has finally achieved the recognition it deserves at the highest level globally. Ilo Ilo was produced with a budget of about $700,000, supported financially by a Singapore Film Commission funding scheme and Chen’s alma mater, Ngee Ann Polytechnic.
This is a film that was devoid of all the traits of a Hollywood blockbuster and targeted at the average Singaporean viewer neither is it a true blue arthouse movie. It did not have a big name star neither was it infused with a good dosage of slapstick comedy which Singaporeans seem to lap up. There was no romantic leading man or lady because there was no romantic sub-plot in the narrative.
What it has, though, is some straight shooting, honest to goodness story-telling without the usual drama and twists that we come to expect of films that generally do well at the box office.
When I thought about this more deeply, I figured how very Singaporean this film was, in every sense of the word. I mean not just because it was made by a Singaporean but also how it was made (budget wise) and how the narrative was kept simple and honest to reflect the filmmaker’s own childhood experience. Chen fought the temptation to resort to gimmicks in order to “spice” up the script just so that it will be more commercial.
It was almost like Chen set out to dress up an autobiographical documentary and parade it as a film. But don’t people go to the movies to suspend their disbelief and be transported to a world that they rarely go into? Or am I just being boringly predictable in terms of what movie-goers really want.
This is where I started to draw some parallels between Ilo Ilo and Singapore. If you were to think of Singapore and how it regularly punches above it’s weight-class in the global political arena, you begin to see some similarities between Ilo Ilo’s string of film awards and Singapore.
Singapore is often seen as a clean and efficient city state where everything works and where we are a hub or centre of excellence for commerce, finance education, etc. Honesty and integrity in government are not just buzzwords but ferverntly pursued and upheld to the highest order.
I could’nt help but feel that Chen took a leaf from the Singapore book on governance, in terms of how he stuck to the things that he felt reflected truthfully his growing up years.
He felt that these were things that Singaporeans could and should relate to as well.
But the box office takings of Sing$1.2 million after a couple of months on 15 prints is not exactly a ringing endorsement from Singapore’s movie-goers. Going by industry estimates, Ilo Ilo has to top $2.1 million just to break even.
By contrast, Jack Neo’s army comedy sequel, Ah Boys To Men 2, became the top grossing local film of all time, garnering $7.9 million at the box office. This was a film made on a budget of about $1.5 million.
Conversely, Ilo Ilo was more successful than Ah Boys in terms of sales to overseas markets. It has already sold in 20 territories abroad which could prove vital in not just ensuring the film breaks even but perhaps also making a modest profit. The movie is doing especially well in France where it grossed 600,000 Euros and is getting good reviews in Taiwan. Gross revenue so far is an impressive $3 million as a result of these overseas box office takings.
Whatever it is, Ilo Ilo has certainly put Singapore on the world map in terms of what our filmmakers can do, small budget, notwithstanding. Chen’s unprecedented wins at Cannes and Taiwan will spur future filmmakers to pursue their craft, open the doors to international markets for future Singaporean filmmakers and maybe, just maybe, embolden financial institutions to support their creative pursuits.
ROI or what financiers term return on investment, need not be solely based on dollar terms. Maybe financiers, by definition, are cynics and because of that they cannot look past the dollar sign. But you know what they say about cynics – they know the price of everything and the value of nothing. Singapore, the Little Red Dot, can certainly appreciate the value of Chen’s achievement.
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