When Teresa is hired as a maid by a middle-class, Singaporean family, she encounters a hostile ten-year old boy. Her own alcoholic husband and a young child home in the Philippines are dependent on her income, so dismissal must be avoided by all means. Outwardly, Ilo Ilo seems to describe how the naughty boy and Teresa open their hearts, eventually reaching a state even closer than a motherson relationship. But beneath the warm story are enormous, complicated socio-economic problems. The boy collects lottery tickets, the mother has to compete both at home and outside at work, the father is jobless, a neighbor commits suicide, and an immigrant laborer is branded a second-class citizen. All these events in this family drama by Director Anthony Chen, reflect the Asian Financial Crisis of the late 1990s when Singapore was uneasily transforming into a multicultural society. Nevertheless in the eyes of the director, looking at the society, optimism is seen as clearly as the discouraging social tensions. (KANG Sowon)