Be With Me

Inspired by the life of Theresa Chan, a deaf-blind 61-year-old whom director Eric Khoo met at a wedding three years ago, this portmanteau piece tracks a series of motifs (notably food and writing) through several stories of yearning without their cohering into anything compelling. Chan is the most striking presence, seen in both documentary and fictional modes as she provides an unfussily inspirational model of how to get on with things, from teaching youngsters handicrafts to cooking eggs. The other (entirely fictional) subjects, however, are far mopier: a widowed shopkeeper slowly shuts up for the night; two teenage girls embark on a drippy romance; a portly security guard pines for a go-getter in his office block. It mostly ends in tears, and the message of hope that’s meant to shine through is close to banal. The version I saw also had the annoying habit of providing subtitles for the various kinds of written English – on a typewriter, text messages etc – that punctuate the film.