Anthony Chen: Nothing will be the same as Ilo Ilo

The name does ring a bell, doesn’t it?

Anthony Chen is the Singaporean who directed the 2013 acclaimed drama Ilo Ilo (spelled two words) which served as his tribute to the Filipino nanny, Teresita D. Sajonia (played by Angeli Bayani in the movie), who raised him as her own son. Chen became so close to the nanny that, 20 years after Teresita came back home, Chen searched for her and found her in Iloilo. Chen invited Teresita to the movie’s premiere, treating her like a VIP.

Ilo Ilo is a beautiful story that makes viewers, whether Filipino or of other nationality, tear up. It is so moving that it leaves you with a little lump in your throat and a liberating effect as it ends happily ever after.

Transgender Christine Jorgensen featured in a recent issue of Sydney’s Daily Telegraph and in the Sampaguita Pictures’ Kaming Mga Talyada in 1962 when she visited the Philippines

The movie had its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival where it won Camera d’Or for Best First Feature and won four trophies at the Golden Horse Awards (Taiwan’s equivalent of the Oscars) including Best Picture.

According to a story titled Life After Ilo Ilo by Yip Wai Yee in a recent issue of Singapore’s Straits Times, before launching and promoting Ilo Ilo around the world, Chen starred in a TV commercial for Tiger Beer and in his own film production company (Giraffe Pictures), and served as mentor and juror on various film festivals.

Chen told the Straits Times that he has already an idea of his follow-up to Ilo Ilo, refusing to reveal further details about the film, except to say that it is about a woman trying to find herself. For Ilo Ilo, Chen had auditioned more than 2,000 schoolboys before choosing Koh Jia Ler (as the young Chen) who was praised for his credible performance as the naughty boy who made his nanny’s life miserable until he gradually grew to love her like his own mom.

The movie’s casting will depend on whether it is set in Singapore or not, according to Chen. If set in Singapore, Chen said that he has to find the right actors. “Many investors have told me that I have the means to hire anybody I want now, whether it is a big star from Hong Kong or Taiwan,” Chen told Straits Times, “but I can’t get them to play Singaporeans, right?”

The yet untitled film is “small,” described by Chen as “something on the scale of Ilo Ilo.”

 Still and all, Chen admitted that Ilo Ilo would be in a class by itself.

He told Straits Times, “The thing is, nothing I do will be the same as what I got for Ilo Ilo. I will never be named Best New Director again and I can never get the Camera d’Or again because you can get that kind of recognition only once.”

Whatever happened to Miss Christine Jorgensen?

That was how the he-turned-she celebrity was billed in Sampaguita Pictures’ Kaming Mga Talyada (We…Who Are Sexy) circa 1962 — Miss Christine Jorgensen “in a special appearance” with lead actors Juancho Gutierrez, Jose Mari, Tony Marzan, Rod Navarro, Boy Alano and Charlie Davao playing sissy characters.

Many people probably don’t know nor remember that, before Caitlyn Jenner and newly-elected Bataan Rep. Geraldine Roman, there was Jorgensen, the world’s first most widely known transgender. According to Troy Lennon, History editor of Sydney’s Daily Telegraph, the first known gender reassignment surgery had been performed in the 1920s by German doctors. The case of Lili Elbe was widely publicized and it inspired the film The Danish Girl with Eddie Redmayne in the titular role nominated for Best Actor in the recent Oscars. Elbe died from rejection of transplants.

The Daily Telegraph story recalled how GI George William Jorgensen became Christine Jorgensen after undergoing gender reassignment in Denmark in early 1950. Overnight, wrote Lennon, “the shy Jorgensen was thrust into the limelight” and traveled the world as an entertainer. She visited the Philippines during her Asian tour and that was how she got a “special appearance” role in the Talyada movie.

Born to a carpenter with Scandinavian heritage in Bronx, New York, on May 30, 1926, Jorgensen succumbed to cancer of the lungs and bladder in 1989. She would have turned 90 last month.

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