Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ

Three tales of love, loss and longing gently come into focus in Be With Me, a Singaporean drama that requires patience but ultimately rewards it. Be prepared to listen with your eyes: with dialogue pared to a minimum (it's a good 20 minutes before anyone actually speaks) feelings are aired and shared via typewriter, text message and email. Clearly, these people have communication problems, but director Eric Khoo (12 Storeys) has the wherewithal to connect them to the viewer's emotions.

Khoo's hushed approach drip-feeds us details at a rate that's slow but steady enough to avert frustration. One of the strands centres on an ageing shopkeeper (Chiew Sung-ching) who brings his hospitalised wife patiently prepared cuisine. At the other end of the age spectrum we have a (slightly mawkish) teenage lesbian romance that begins in a chatroom but ends in despair. The third story revolves around Fatty (Seet Keng Yew), a face-stuffing security guard who worships a woman working in his building from afar.

"AWKWARD BUT ABSORBING"

In between the narrative fragments are chunks of typewritten wisdom ("Love disappears only when you do not understand what it means") from Theresa Chan, a real-life deaf-blind teacher who takes centre stage for a stretch. The switch from fiction to fact is at first awkward but then absorbing, as we read subtitled snippets from Chan's autobiography while watching her quietly inspiring daily routine. Rather than a distraction, she becomes the heart of the film; with the other threads turning into tragedies, it's a relief to have someone creating a sense of hope.