Be With Me

A

Directed by Eric Khoo

Movies about the disabled have become unfortunately best known for their heavihandedness and tear-jerking proclivities moreso than anything else. True stinkers such as "I Am Sam" come to mind, movies that are more interested in making a play for Oscar gold than in communicating anything about the disabilities their characters are afflicted with. This is fortunately not the case with Singaporean director Eric Khoo's marvelous "Be With Me."

"Be With Me" is an elliptical film that loosely interweaves four stories of love together, all of which show the vastly different forms love takes, from unrequited love to broken love to the rarest of all loves, the type that lasts a lifetime. These stories are focused around characters as disparate as a lonely and overweight night watchman and a young girl who is jilted by her lover, but the film's main focus revolves around the story of a blind and deaf woman writing the story of her life. Although the storylines here may sound like Gabriel Inniratu meets Nicolas Sparks, "Be With Me" is a subdued, meditative film that treats its characters seriously and handles its subject matter, both the heavy and the light, with perfect care, letting the stories tell themselves in a way that allows for a more powerful impact than any sweeping score, overwrought performance or other emotional manipulation usually featured in films about the disabled. Theresa Chan, the woman on whose life the film is based, actually plays herself in the film so there is no need for over the top acting. Chan's story is both truly uplifting and life affirming in the best possible way in the sense that Chan, even though afflicted with the inability to hear or to see, nonetheless finds the will to not only go through life but enjoy living as well. At one point Chan poignantly remarks that her disability has kept her from seeing or hearing all the beautiful things in the world but it has also kept her from seeing or hearing all the ugly things as well.

It is very difficult to convey how succesful this film is in soliciting an emotional response without trying to wilfully ply one out of its audience but it must be said that this is the supreme achievement of Khoo's film. The only other film I have ever seen that dealt with the disabled with the same warm, respectful, and non-manipulative approach was "Oasis" by director Lee Chang Dong. Both films knew how to toe the line between soliciting an appropriate emotional reaction from their audience and showing respect towards their subject matter and in both cases the end result were films of devastating emotional impact.