framing device

I mentioned to my friend Garth last week how much simpler it is to write reviews of films you loathe than of ones you love. Sarcasm and nasty criticism make for deliciously easy writing. Rave reviews, on the other hand, are much, much harder. If you’re not careful, it’s easy to sound like a gushing teenager describing his favorite band. All that to say, please excuse me if I slip into gushdom over the latest film by Singapore director Eric Khoo.

Be with Me is one of those rare films that’s both rigorous and deeply moving. It’s based on the real-life story of Theresa Chan, a 61-year-old deaf and blind woman who appears as herself in the movie. If you’ve been fortunate enough to catch Werner Herzog’s Land of Silence and Darkness (which played in Chicago this summer), think of Fini Straubinger. Theresa is just as much a force of nature and an utterly compelling screen presence.

This film is not a documentary, however. Instead Khoo and co-writer Wong Kim Hoh surround Theresa’s tale with several fictional stories. A teen girl falls in love with a girl she meets online. An overweight security guard obsesses over a gorgeous professional he sees every day. An old shopkeeper struggles with his wife’s absence. The shopkeeper’s son works as a social worker, assisting the poor and needy. Through it all, Theresa makes her way through the day while writing her autobiography, which is also a treatise on love, both earthly and heavenly.

Featuring little dialogue (though a fair amount of on-screen text), Be with Me constructs its stories from careful observation, gorgeous widescreen compositions, and a beautiful mix of music and ambient sound. Khoo combines close ups of faces and food with long shots of people in an urban setting. He also uses clever visual rhymes and sharp editing. In back-to-back scenes, the shopkeeper and Theresa are linked by how they sit. The teen girl, who’s been spurned by her girlfriend, is isolated in a telephone booth just as the security guard is isolated in his workspace.

The script also embodies this sense of isolation through its soundtrack, which is quiet and minimalist. Much of the “dialogue” occurs without talking: the girls chatting online and text messaging, the social worker talking to Theresa through her hand, the security guard trying to write a love letter. The most innovative example is how Khoo displays sections of Theresa’s autobiography in subtitles, while we see her teaching other blind students or we watch various characters trying to connect. So many directors would’ve used a voiceover, but the silent subtitles are that much more effective and unobtrusive. A gorgeous melancholy piano playing in the background undergirds the soundtrack, except in key moments when Khoo lets the silence speak for itself.

Theresa’s story becomes more prominent as the film goes on, and I wish Be with Me could’ve achieved a better balance. But Khoo is in total control of everything else, never allowing his emotional narratives to slip into sentimentality. And by keeping such control, he makes the themes of communication and love (both gained and lost) so much more powerful. This reaches its climax in a finale that left me in tears.

I don’t usually like to quote other critics, but filmmaker Tsai Ming-liang’s thoughts on the film are perfect: “Through Eric Khoo’s camera lens, we can see his mission: finding a way out in a lonely metropolis for the downtrodden, the fragile, and the defeated, who are both among us and like us. Watching the old man’s face and his embrace with the blind lady, I am deeply moved.” Or as Theresa Chan writes, “Be with me, my beloved love, that my smile may not fade.”