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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.

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.

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.

Love how my previous entry was also about a movie, specifically those little nasty ones in the romance genre. Teddy Bear. I don't know whats up with me but I cannot rate a movie 2 3 or 4 stars. Either I love it or hate it. I think part of it is because I have the nasty tendency of seeing myself in everything. If I see myself and the message resonates... the other nasty tendency to activate my nasolacrimal ducts. This one didn't jerk my tears, it just sort of gave me hope. Mired in Dennis's brutal awkwardness, I couldn't help but cheer him on when the only thing he really wanted from Toi was to save him from the gut wrenching loneliness that was still there as he was being accosted by Thailand's finest. IDK if it was his upbringing or my own idealistic tendencies, but Dennis's refusal to sex even if Toi was kinda really cute in that thing signifies to me even more that just sex, the casual variety of intimacy, was something that Dennis has experienced and understands the fleeting nature of. Description said unexpected lesson about life and love. I think Dennis was taught what love meant the moment he stepped into that gym. Loving something or someone is being able to be or do anywhere and enjoy it just as much as you would at home. Love is the universal language that needs not for words to fail to have its place. Love brings together no matter where, no matter how and no matter who. I think this taught me and the viewer what love isn't. Love is not the absence of loneliness but rather the embracing of loneliness through companionship. Dennis's mother feels as if he does not love her because he leaves on his own whim. Dennis only leaves because he is lonely. Lonely because the companionship of a mother waits only to be replaced by matrimony. Void of matrimonial substance, Ingrid clings to her son. Love is not conditional upon loyalty to this companionship however. Love can transcend time and space. Love rends the heart while its claws lay hundreds of miles away, only to be mended with the redolent whispers of lovers, nowadays voiced over internet protocol. Love is in the letters of bygone days between the stranded and the shipwrecked.

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.