Ilo Ilo

The winner of the Caméra d'Or at Cannes, this drama about a Filipino maid working for a family from hell is vivid, touching and sensationally acted. We're in Singapore in the recession-hit late 1990s, where tough, professional and kindly migrant worker Terry (Angeli Bayani) is hired to keep house for a rude, thoughtless family comprising a spiteful, petty wife (Yann Yann Yeo), a boorish stupid husband (Tian Wen Chen) and a spectacularly foul child (Jialer Koh). Like a more economically realistic version of Mary Poppins, minus the tunes, writer/director Anthony Chen's drama observes as Terry works a kind of magic on the furious problem child, even as the lasso of financial hardship tightens around his parents. If it sounds cloying, it isn't. Nor is it a screed against exploitative capitalism. It's too acutely observed and humane for that. And here, the actors, remarkable all round, really come into their own.