10 timer til Paradis

It's a "feeling" movie. It's about a mood, a feeling. Inside one person, searching for it in another person. The feeling is gentleness. And the pervasive powerful, insistent sense of it coming out of such a person, is just... amazing.

It's totally a visual movie. The content and plot are nothing to be concerned with, they are Normal.

Watch how Abnormal this guy is. Watch how he persistently avoids the Normal and finds another person like himself. (She's actually quite a bit more normal than he is)

He is a Mountain, a Monument of abnormality, dedicated to being gentle in a world that is almost completely unable to let me (or any of us, for the matter) be gentle.

And it's Not just his nature, it's also a dedication. And somehow he Uses that bodybuilding to reinforce his gentleness. He Moves gently.

It's quite a performance. I have no idea who he is, or what he actually is like, nor do I care. But here, he and the director have built... and elephant of a person. Huge, powerful, and gentle.

Joy to watch.

Teddy Bear (2012)

And you thought you were shy? This guy, who is all about power and presence, a massive bodybuilder, is a social misfit afraid of his own shadow. And I believe it. I almost felt sorry for the actor, forgetting the difference.

I suppose the story from the outside is overly simple--an aging bodybuilder is looking for love, but his overbearing (and tiny) mother doesn't want him to move out and move on. So he is kind and kinder and stays and yet he has some kind of need to have a girlfriend that won't just go away. With the secret help of an uncle, he makes a trip to Thailand. And here he meets girls, but he can hardly speak, and nothing comes of it. The second day there he finds a weightlifting gym and asks if he can work out. And all of a sudden he is at ease and himself.

And things go from there, not in any unexpected way. All of this is told with such touching restraint it makes you really involved. The leading man, Kim Kold, obviously a bodybuilder (like Schwarzenegger, you can't fake that stuff), is really good at playing an exceedingly quiet guy, but not a stupid one. He is going to be in a Hollywood movie ("Fast and Furious 6") this year, and who knows whether it'll be a first step or a last one. It seems like, just because of his Hulk shaped body, he has a future at least as a character actor.

The movie, all told, might lack some kind of storytelling nuance. It is what it is on purpose, but so much so it sometimes floats a little. This kind of Indie style often works just the way life does--things are interesting, watching some new people do some new things in an undistracted way is going to be watchable. And this does that, and well. It's because of its sincerity that you have some kind of emotional connection. But there is no magic, either, the way some films use small casts and simple touching plots and also find a way to lift the experience into something rare. (I'm thinking here of a similar movie about an aging wrestler in South America, "Bad Day to Go Fishing," which I highly recommend.)

I don't know the Danish film world much except that we, in the U.S., seem to get the cream of the crop and so the few I've seen have all been exceptional. I'd give this a look.

The Teddy Bear here is a thirty eight year old bodybuilder, Dennis, who lives at home with his domineering mother, Ingrid, in a very disturbing relationship. From the start, it is apparent that his mom has a few screws loose. The opening scene shows Dennis at a restaurant with a woman on a date. He is completely out of sorts and shows the emotional level of a high school boy at the senior prom. Back at home, he tells mommy dearest that he has been to a movie with his friend, Lars. Later on at a dinner, he meets someone with a wife from Thailand, who inspires him to travel there to find a mate. He tells his mother that he is going to Germany instead. In Pataya, he is swarmed by prostitutes and ends up in a very awkward situation with one of them. He meets Toi, and they manage to make a connection. Eventually, mom finds out and the fireworks begin. Kim Kold as Dennis and Elsebeth Steentoft as Ingrid are outstanding in this disturbing and deeply moving look at human nature from Denmark; a definite candidate for best foreign language film at the Oscars.

This film tells the story of a respected and famous body building, who lives under the shadow of his judgemental mother. He travels to Thailand on the advice of his uncle, and finds a whole different world outside his home.

"Teddy Bear" looks cute on the surface, but addresses a lot of underlying psychological and ethical issues in the plot. The mother holds a strong stance against sex tourism, which is understandable, and a viewpoint that has to be portrayed in a film like this. While the bodybuilder goes to Thailand, he still holds respect towards women which is a welcoming subplot. The way he breaks through cultural barriers, and the shackles imposed on him by his family is also well explored and well presented. I enjoyed watching this film.

This was such a venture into the unfamiliar for me, this small window into the life of a gentle giant who happens to be a body builder, living with his mother in Denmark and looking for love. That was a mouth full. I was initially taken aback because I did not expect subtitles, but the film had a good balance of the spoken English versus Danish and Thai, and it shows that around the world the unifying language is English. In all I was glad I did not have to read the whole movie. Dennis (Kim Kold) is so large that when you first take in his entire physique, he is a bit menacing. At one point in the film when he does the muscle flex poses that are part of the body building culture he has this strained smile on his face that is rather creepy. It dawns on me that everyone is faced with some prejudice based on their appearance. A chance encounter with Dennis would make most anyone consider turning to run the other way, but this film shows that he is so affable, that even with all his girth, he is completely dominated by his mother. This film could have easily been entitled Danish Mommy Dearest. The quirkiest part about the relationship between Dennis and his mother Ingrid (Elsebeth Steentoft) is that she is so diminutive that when they interact he hulks over her. As the story progressed and Dennis ventures out to Pattaya Thailand and meets Toi (Lamaiporn Hougaard), we truly get to know who Dennis is. This segment of the film is the reason for the aforementioned English language being a unifier. At home Dennis spoke Danish, he meets Toi who speaks Thai and as they get to know each other they speak English. Who woulda thunk it. I was at no point in the story sure of what recourse Dennis would take. Would he succumb to the wishes of his mother or seek some personal happiness for himself. This film made it quite clear why Dennis was a body builder, and proved if it ain't one thing it's your mother. The story was an unexpected delight, and it shows that no matter what is on the outside or what your background happens to be, that inside everyone is basically the same, no one wants to be alone. I give this charming little story an amber light.