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.

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.

I found this Danish film to be a real find and a little gem of a movie. It's written and directed by Mads Matthiesen, who is making his major motion picture debut.Kim Kold, an actual former Danish National Bodybuilding Champion, is terrific portraying Dennis Petersen, a 38 year old introverted nice guy. He's a hulk of a man who in the film is also a professional bodybuilder and former champion.But Dennis has a problem. His mother Ingrid, marvelously portrayed by the veteran Danish actress Elsebeth Steentoft, is a controlling, manipulative, and selfish person, who will do just about anything to keep Dennis at home and under her emotional control.When Dennis' uncle Bent rewards him with a trip to Thailand after he helped him with a major yard project, Dennis lies to Ingrid and tells her he's going to a weightlifting competition in Germany. When Dennis arrives in Thailand he's not comfortable with the prolific prostitutes there who are continually trying to solicit him. Instead he meets Toi, also wonderfully portrayed by Lamaiporn Sangmanee Hougaard, who is the owner of the gym where Dennis has stopped off at. They hit it off and Toi shows him around the city and the surrounding countryside.Dennis ends up inviting her to come to Denmark and live there. He even goes out and secretly rents an apartment for her, knowing that Ingrid is going to be upset.When Toi takes him up on his offer and comes to live in Denmark, Ingrid finds out and it all spirals into a dramatic conclusion. I found this movie to be a surprising little gem, but it's probably not for everyone. But for those viewers who have the patience to enjoy a quiet, droll foreign film that has an interesting and original story you may very well like this film as I did.

Danish screenwriter and director Mads Matthiesen's feature film debut which he co-wrote with Danish screenwriter and director Martin Pieter Zandvliet, is based on his short film "Dennis" (2007) and was screened in the World Cinema Dramatic section at the 28th Sundance Film Festival in 2012. It was shot on location in Copenhagen and Omegn in Denmark and Pattaya and Bangkok in Thailand and is a Danish production which was produced by producer Morten Kjems Juhl. It tells the story about Dennis, a 38-year-old bodybuilder who lives in a suburb of Copenhagen with his mother Ingrid. After learning from his uncle Bent that it's easier to come in contact with women in Thailand than in Denmark, he tells his mother that he is attending an upcoming competition in Germany and goes on a journey.Acutely directed by Danish filmmaker Mads Matthiesen, this finely paced fictional tale which is narrated mostly from the main character's point of view, draws a genuinely heartfelt portrayal of a man's search for a girlfriend and his relationship with his mother. While notable for its naturalistic and atmospheric milieu depictions and fine cinematography by Danish cinematographer Laust Trier-Mørk, this character-driven drama depicts a insightful study of character and contains a great score by composer Sune Martin which emphasizes it's lingering atmosphere.This incisively romantic, authentic and touching story about life-altering choices and the gracefulness of human nature, is impelled and reinforced by its cogent narrative structure, subtle character development and continuity, endearing characters and the empathic and heartrending acting performances by Danish actor Kim Kold, actress Chanicha Shindejanichakul and Danish actress Elsebeth Steentoft. A minimalistic and poignant love-story which gained the Directing Award Mads Matthiesen at the 28th Sundance Film Festival in 2012.