Be With Me Details

4 in 1

An aged shopkeeper lovingly tends his dying wife, a schoolgirl falls hopelessly in love with another schoolgirl, a lonely, middle-aged, overweight security guard is infatuated with a smart young businesswoman who works in the same building but is unable to find the confidence to speak to her so he resorts to stalking her first electronically through his security monitors and then physically. Three fictional tales of unrequited love concerning people from three different age groups all interwoven with the true story of Theresa Chan, a deaf and blind woman who patiently teaches disabled children, a Helen Keller of Singapore.

This is a slow and gentle film which uses very little spoken dialogue to tell its four interwoven strands instead the fine soundtrack music is well able to express the moods required by the director. There is more written communication than verbal in some segments. Theresa Chan uses a manual typewriter with a broken shift key, the two girls communicate via email and mobile phone texts while the security guard attempts to write a love letter on beautifully decorated paper.

The movie uses long takes with static compositions and subdued colours Each story is kept quite distinct although each touches at least one other even if only tangentially. The director resists the temptation to play it for sobs so that despite the potentially depressing subject matter it is surprisingly upbeat possibly because of the uplifting nature of Ms. Chan’s achievements and because the director chose to end the movie on a note of hope..

As with all movies which follow disparate characters there are points of connection. Unfortunately that between the schoolgirl and the guard seems rather forced whilst although the director claims that it was Ms. Chan’s story that inspired him her section is more a documentary and is so different in tone that it sits uneasily amongst the other stories and sometimes interrupts the flow of the movie.

Finally the film suffers on comparison with Hsiao-hsien Hou’s triptych ‘Three Times’ yet despite its faults it is still a movie worth seeing.

The extras include what is called a ‘director’s commentary’ but is more like an extended interview with the whole cast and crew. I did not find it particularly helpful but some will find it interesting. There is also an interview with Eric Khoo in which he talks about the gap between his last film and this one and his meeting with Theresa Chan. Then there are the usual trailers etc. Interestingly but not perhaps surprisingly there is an audio subtitling track for the visually impaired.

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very painful to watch

I couldn't watch properly, I found the movie very depressing, hardly have any dialog, very confusing because there were showing he stories of different people at the same time in different times of their life( very hard to follow) they keep changing from one character life to another character life that they don't have anything in common until the very end when the girl try to kill herself by jumping from a building and end up landing on this men killing him ( if you decide for any cause to watch this movie, try not to watch it when you are feeling down, it will make sure it finish you) .