Succinct, handheld camerawork and deft performances amplify the drama's emotional clout.

| Original Score: 4/5 | May 3, 2016

Ilo Ilo deals with that perennial dilemma of the middle-class working parent: how to deal with the live-in nanny who begins to usurp your role.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 1, 2015

Chen builds his case not with sentimentality and obvious plot points, but through everyday life -- showering, doing laundry, dropping the boy off at school, phone calls.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Aug 21, 2014

The crowded compositions convey a sense of life in the dense Asian city-state, but also the intimacy of this semi-autobiographical story.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jul 17, 2014

Anthony Chen, a Singaporean writer-director with a half-dozen shorts to his credit, makes his feature debut with this vividly characterized domestic drama.

| May 22, 2014

This sympathetic and engaging drama is deceptively gentle in its insight - compassionate yet unsentimental.

| Original Score: 4/5 | May 4, 2014

Low on feel-good pizzazz but absolutely brimming with love and respect.

| Original Score: 4/5 | May 2, 2014

Anthony Chen puts modern Singaporese cinema on the map with this beautifully observed and gently comic family drama.

| Original Score: 4/5 | May 1, 2014

Chen scurries his handheld camera around the apartment and neighbouring streets like a tyro Truffaut. He could be making Les Quatre cent coos.

| Original Score: 4/5 | May 1, 2014

Ilo Ilo is filled with sweetness, humour and humanity: so assured and accomplished that it's hard to believe this is a first feature.

| Original Score: 4/5 | May 1, 2014

Not all magically benevolent nannies fly on talking umbrellas, as we learn in this beautifully formed little heart-tugger.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 27, 2014

Characters who may seem hopeless begin to suggest a vulnerable side, and none truly deserve the situations that afflict them.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Apr 10, 2014

"Ilo Ilo" is writer-director Anthony Chen's first film, but breathtaking intimacy in storytelling is already second nature to him.

| Apr 10, 2014

The acting is terrific, as is the attention to detail.

| Original Score: 4.5/5 | Apr 10, 2014

By the end of a movie that could have been a tear-jerker, you empathize with everybody equally.

| Apr 3, 2014

Small details and incidents accrete into a pointillist rendering of despair.

| Apr 2, 2014

A satisfying beam of compassion.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 1, 2014

Chen's interest has a tighter domestic focus, gently probing the unspoken fault lines of class, race and age that run through modern, multicultural Singapore.

| Mar 31, 2014

A delicate comedy-drama that contains four nicely realized and empathetic characters.

Full Review | Mar 31, 2014

There's a guarded optimism to this hushed, thoughtful miniature, even with our knowledge of the yo-yo economy to come.

| Original Score: B | Mar 31, 2014