Be With Me
by Eric Khoo, Singapour

In very personal and moving portraits, the film presents different ways of escaping isolation. In their search for love and solidarity, the characters use various means of communication. The deaf and blind woman is but one example of courage and hope. All this is developed with great respect for the characters.

A teenage girl’s thwarted sapphic love, a security guard’s secret admiration for a young and dynamic executive manageress, an old man’s difficulty letting his deceased wife go: three intermingled tales about communication problems despite the existence of all modern means of communication. Three destinies put into perspective by Theresa Chan’s fate, an old woman, who is deaf and blind. 
            
 Erik Khoo wanted to make a film about love at three difficult periods of life. A film made of silence, where communication is essentially done in writing – via Internet, SMS and letters. He simply lets the images speak. The camera remains almost immobile, while dialogues are kept to a minimum and while the relationship with food becomes the symbol of the relationship with others. Theresa Chan, by whom the story is inspired, plays her own role. Her presence among the other figures is dazzling. Despite the isolation caused by her double handicap, she is a paragon of hope and humanity in a world where the truly sentimentally handicapped protagonists are incapable of extricating themselves from the cocoon they have locked themselves into. (Festival information)