Barcelona Dispatch. 8.

Urban loneliness is one of the most recurrent issues in Asian cinema today, at least going by BAFF's selection, and the beautiful Be With Me, the third film by Singaporean Eric Khoo (Mee Pok Man, 12 Storeys), presented as part of the Asian Selection, addresses this illness of modern life from a singular, poetic and moving perspective. The memories, biography and everyday life of Theresa Chan, a blind and deaf and wise woman, inspire a meditation on love that can shatter heart and soul. Like Manohla Dargis, I was in tears by the end. So was film-meister Tsai Ming-Liang: "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."

The story of that old man is one of three surrounding the real character of Theresa Chan, apparently all within a certain distance. Here is a man who's lost his desire to live since his wife died - his way to happiness (or something like it) comes from reading the memories of Theresa Chan and meeting her personally, an unforgettable encounter. Then there's the needful Fatty, a borderline security guard who lives only for feeding himself avariciously and spying on his object of desire, a beautiful executive living in his block of flats. Finally, and mainly for this viewer, who was crushed by their story, there are two teenage girls called Ann and Jackie who have met via the Internet and live out a romance, though not for long, as one of them will quickly turn her head to a guy and will leave the other to sink into depression - sad SMS, angst, and ennui abound, without happy consequences.

The stories are great, but what makes Be With Me incredibly special is the way they are told and woven with the craft of a poet. Or maybe essayist, as the film's unique blend of fiction and reality, image and text, is that of someone analyzing the means of cinema and a way of translating emotions to the screen with an absolute fidelity. Dialogue is minimal and images and actions are simple and resonant; everything punctuated by the words of Chan in voiceover, subtitles or as the center of film (those marvellous epiphanies written with an old typewriter covering the image with spleen). Anyone who missed it at Gijon should check it now at BAFF - this is a bittersweet symphony which has not only the smarts to make a step forward for the medium, but also the heart to make it all a worthwhile experiment. Can we expect anything else from a film? Not me, at least. A complicated but beautiful classic.

Posted by dwhudson at May 6, 2006 2:23 PM