Be with Me (2005)

Narrative pyrotechnics is not the exclusive domain of screenwriter Charlie Kaufman("Being John Malkovich", "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind"); it just seems that way. Nobody in Hollywood, off-Hollywood, or around the world, pulls off meta- with more lunacy, heart, and panache than the erudite iconoclast who forced the writers' branch of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to nominate his doppleganger, an identical twin brother named Donald, for Best Adapted Screenplay, 2002's "Adaptation", a film that "Be With Me" can be favorably compared with. But rather that skewer the blockbuster mentality of contemporary Hollywood movies, in which Kaufman created an alter-ego to purposely sabotage his winsome love story about real-life writer Susan Orlean(played by Meryl Streep) and an orchid thief with inappropriately formulaic screen writing, this gentle film from Singapore goes after something even more elevated. "Be With Me" attempts to be the missing link that sutures the documentary with the filmic tradition of neorealism.An old man grieves over the recent death of his wife; a morbidly obese security guard swoons over an oblivious, and unattainable woman; a teenage lesbian is forsaken by a bi-curious vamp who jilts her for a boy; three linked stories that are interrupted well into "Be With Me" by a seemingly incongruous fourth one, an adaptation of a blind and deaf woman's memoir that plays like non-fiction. Her name is Theresa Chan, who like Orlean(author of "The Orchid Thief"), are installed in a narrative that tells the story of the forthcoming book's creation. While "Adaptation" may seem like the bolder film, "Be With Me" goes ones step further than the Spike Jonze-directed mind bender by having Chan play herself. With very little staging, the documentary within the narrative film(Taiwanese filmmaker Hou Hsiao-hsien used this technique in 1993's "Xi meng ren sheng") records the startling competency of this severely disabled woman who can cook her own meals and teach disabled children like herself to cope, to live. With modest daring, the documentary doesn't exist in a vacuum. Extracts from Chan's memoir on the screen like subtitles, as if silence itself was a foreign language. By not providing a voice-over, the film respects the interior language of the hearing impaired. Chan's subtitles mirror the camera's focus on the text-messaging that substitutes for spoken dialogue between "dumbangel 67" and "sympgirl". The correlation being: technology turns us into virtual handicaps. The two girls can't see or hear each other when they text message or chat online.The man who accompanies Theresa to the market and bring her meals is also the widower's son. After his father shut down the modest grocery store he ran with his late wife, the old man exiled himself into a desensitized world of his own making. The black covering that shrouds the storefront gate looks like a metaphor for his "blindness". He lives with the ghost of his wife, a woman he can't see or hear. To lift his handicap, the son gives the father a Chinese translation of Chan's memoirs. In "Being John Malkovich". Craig Schwartz(John Cusack) discovers a portal that allows people to hack into another man's consciousness. Although there's no on-screen portal in "Be With Me", a similarly divine gateway is suggested by the son's ability to maneuver between both, the fictional and non-fictional diegeses of the film. Neo-realism, the Italian tradition of using real people in real locations, is given a self-reflexivity when the son visits his father, and then the lesbian, who is hospitalized after the security guard averts her attempt at suicide by sheer happenstance. The son instigates an alchemy wherever he goes. When the father reads Theresa's autobiography, the real words of the living and breathing turns this cipher into a real man. A ghost, a fictive story element that's anathemic to neorealism, no longer has a place in the spatial reality of the reconstituted father, transformed by his intertextual son and the text he carries from the real world. The father's corporeality is finalized when he boards the bus to deliver Theresa's food he prepared for her in person."Be With Me", far from being simply an "art" film, is a heart film. It's both metaphysical and emotional. Brilliant!

The film is special in that it takes away a very essential part of a film: the dialog. The director has to use another way to get across the messages, and this is by no means easy. The viewer also has to adjust to the lack of explicit dialog in order to appreciate the film. I sat through the movies uncomfortably. I nevertheless like the film since it gives me a chance to exercise my imagination.Another unusual feature of the film is that the three parts of the film do not connect with each other. I see it as a way to express the core idea of individual solitude in a modern society. Everyone is confined to his or her own world. It's not easy to confront this unfortunate aspect of cosmopolitan life. To the extent that the viewer finds the whole film boring, it's already a success. Atomized life is indeed very boring.I also saw through the deaf and blind character that we should not take our senses for granted. Try imagine how your world would be like if they are taken away from you. The character's will of accepting her physical deficiencies is very inspiring.In contrast, the parts about the security guard and the short relationship between two young lesbian girls are not worth remembering. It's nothing new. You find these people all the time.

A slow paced, often silent, web-of-life narrative drama cum documentary inspired in part by the real circumstances and autobiography of a 61 year old blind, deaf woman, Theresa Chan, who plays herself in the film. The movie begins in a simple, spare but thoroughly engaging way: as the opening credits roll, we watch the scene behind, in which an old man and woman are slowly, methodically, closing up their shop for the night, probably in the exact manner they have practiced for decades. A slow jazz piano solo accompanies the scenes.We revisit this couple in frequent brief glimpses (that is the way we view each little story in this film about communication, love and loss) and realize in time that the wife has died. The old couple's adult son, a social worker, aids Ms. Chan, translating her memoirs, bringing her hot meals that his widower father prepares. The son arranges for his father to deliver the meal to Ms. Chan himself one evening, and they seem to hit it off, as the son, no doubt, had hoped.Another story concerns a fat, lonely security guard with a boundless appetite. Treated shabbily by his family, he finds solace in downing huge meals. But he suffers from another kind of hunger, a longing for a chic young woman, Jackie, whom he idolizes from afar. Yet another story concerns a lesbian sexual adventure arranged – indeed conducted in large part – between Jackie and another young woman through cell phone and Internet chat room contacts. But the other girl soon falls for a young man and abruptly dumps Jackie.Ms. Chan is an exceptional person. She lost hearing in childhood, and developed blindness not long thereafter. Following a long period of despair, she studied at a prominent school for the blind in Singapore, then mastered English in order to attend the Perkins School in Boston. She lives quite independently, works as a writer and also teaches pottery classes at the same school for blind kids that she had attended years earlier. It is interesting to watch how the social worker communicates with her using a tactile signing system applied to her outstretched hand. An unusual and quite charming film. (In Cantonese, English, Hokkien & Mandarin) My grades: 7/10 (B) (Seen at the Idaho International Film Festival, 10/01/06)

This movie is about 3 stories put together revolving around 3 separate individuals. One of the worst movie that is available and even better if it is not available.The Good : 2 pretty lesbians actress 1 true and touching story about Theresa ChanThe Bad :The main story that revolves around the blind and dear woman Theresa Chan does not need to be told in a movie format and more appropriate in a documentary format. No linkage between the 3 story lines. Minimum DIALOGUE in the film, substituted by SMSs and CHAT programs on PC. No cultural insight by the movie and it makes you forget even before you step out of the cinema.