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Eric Khoo's meditation on suffering and sympathy, Be With Me, is as bold in how it's made as in the stories it dares to tell. The film starts out exploring a romance between two girls that shifts into obsession, an old man's relationship with his wife, and a security guard's stalking of a woman he sees through a surveillance camera. But gradually it shifts its focus to Theresa Poh Lin Chan, a deaf and blind woman who teaches blind children and has a healthier appreciation for pain and blessing than do most people with all five senses. She appears as herself, going about her daily life, as excerpts from her autobiography appear in subtitles. This makes for long passages that are nearly silent. (She speaks only occassionally, in a strangely accented English she learned after going deaf in childhood.) Yet reading the reminiscences of her life and world travels, as well as seeing the way she's able to navigate the world, make for engrossing cinema. Eventually the other stories are woven back into the picture and human connection and comfort come into the foreground. An elegant score by Kevin Mathews and Christine Sham complements the gentle tone. This is a slow, insistent, heartfelt film by a veteran director who knows what he wants to say and says it confidently. It's a prayer for the souls of the living that transcends religion and culture.