Be With Me

Eric Khoo's Be With Me falls into a rich tradition of films depicting themes of love and loneliness using parallel narratives, such as Wong Kar-wai's Chung King Express and, more recently, Hou Hsou Hsien's Three Times, a portmanteau film that follows three sets of lovers played by the same actors in three different periods (there is also the Hong Kong Film 20 30 40, about love at the three stages of a woman's life). Be With Me features four damaged characters, whose stories run parallel and overlap, but a its centre is the true story of Theresa Chan, an inspiring lady who, despite being deaf and blind, has lived a life fuller than most. Khoo was inspired to write the script after meeting Theresa and reading her autobiography, having for a long while attempted to make a film about hope. Watching Be With Me it is easy to feel grateful that Hollywood didn't get to the story first and give it the biopic treatment; turning it into a glib, self important 'inspirational' story driven by star performances and a majestic score (see Iris or A beautiful Mind). Be With Me is, happily, resolutely low key and gains an incredible emotional change simply from having Theresa play herself within a cast of first time actors.

The film opens with an old man cooking a meal with consumate skill, packing it and carrying it on the bus to a hospital ward, where he spoon feeds his ailing wife. This wordless opening sequence is incredible for its emotionally disarming quality. This is in no small part due to the astonishing use of close ups of the man's deeply expressive yet ultimately ordinary face, the grainy delicacy of the shots perfectly accenuated by the Panasonic Varicam. These shots immediately evoke the sense of vulnerability with which Khoo invests his characters. Eventually the man brings his wife home and cooks for her there, but it is only when his son joins them that we are informed that his mother is dead, and we have been witnessing the man's grief visualised as a ghost. Although it is becoming a cliche (not to mention a simplification) to note how Asian cultures have a closer link to the spirit world, it's true that an increasing number of films are using this device, including Pan-ek Ratuarang's Last Life in the Universe, Stanley Kwan's Rouge, and Park Chan-Wook's Vengeance Trilogy. The old man finds his life has a purpose again when his son, who is helping Theresa to write her biography, persuades him to cook meals for her and the film ends with them encountering one another for the first time (another film that uses cooking to bring people together is Ang Lee's brilliant Eat, Drink, Man, Woman).

The film's other characters are less fortunate. An insecure, overweight security guard, who is bullied by his brother, admires a beautiful executive who works in his building to the point of obsession, watching her through security cameras. He attempts to make contact by writing a love letter but he is frustrated by his inability to express his emotions. Although not deaf or blind, the film reminds us that there are other ways that human beings can become alienated from society. It is the forth narrative that is the weakest, and sadly detracts from the accomplishments of the rest of the film. A lesbian relationship between two school girls, and the rejection that leads one to attempt suicide, is treated in a tone that often boarders on kitsch and jars with the emotional subtlety of the central story. Although Khoo may be commenting on the superficiality of the girl's emotion, and the tragic lightness of her decision to end her life in counterpoint to Theresa Chan's perseverance, the fact that she survives by crushing the security guard, who is on the way to deliver his letter, is an irony too far and seems conspicuously out of place.

Although frustratingly uneven in this sense, Be With Me is a film that breaks new ground in terms of using images to convey emotion. Very few words are spoken in the film; instead Theresa Chan narrates her story in a series of subtitles that play over silent images (although this device is perhaps overused) and the two girls communicate via text messages rather than through speech (which may be the source of their failing relationship). Various forms of communication (letters, mobiles, braile) and a corresponding lack of human contact becomes the theme that connects and disconnects the atomised characters. Eric Khoo shows that he is almost as good as Tsai Ming-liang at exploring alienation in the contemporary metropolis, a theme that is becoming more prevalent in Asian cinema, including the sixth generation of Chinese directors (Jia Zhang-ke's Unknown Pleasures and Lou Ye's Suzhou River being good examples. The fact that it was shot in just 16 days is amazing.