Teddy Bear: Sundance Film Review - The Hollywood Reporter
Super-heavyweight bodybuilder Kim Kold plays a man whose massive physique can't hide the emotionally stunted outsider within in Danish director Mads Matthiesen's first feature.
PARK CITY – The title implies something adorable but also soft, and it’s the avoidance of that latter quality that makes Teddy Bear a pleasurable character study. Danish director Mads Matthiesen’s feature expansion of his much-lauded 2007 short film, Dennis, recounts a gentle giant’s struggle to overcome crippling shyness and take hold of his life. In other hands, the material might have drowned in cute quirks, but Matthiesen’s unadorned observational style has a distinctly Scandinavian stoicism that trusts both the comedy and sentiment to emerge organically.
Dennis (Kim Kold) is a mountain of tattooed muscle, a 38-year-old professional bodybuilder with a gruff face and a timid heart. He’s also got a controlling mother, Ingrid (Elsebeth Steentoft), a needy, suffocating nag who treats him like a child. She could be teaching masterclasses in passive-aggressiveness and the artful manipulation of filial guilt. But Dennis is loving and loyal. An awkward date scene shows how ill-equipped he is to break away even if Ma were to loosen her grip.
He seems most relaxed at the gym, where composer Sune Martin’s joyous music conveys the contentment he gets from lifting weights, spotting his workout buddy (Patrick Johnson) or giving him pointers on posing and flexing.
Dennis and his mother attend the wedding of his Uncle Bent (Allan Mogensen), who is no catch but has come back from Thailand with a young bride (Sukianya Suwan). In the amusingly uncomfortable scene, the guests’ congratulatory toasts barely conceal their stony-faced judgment, Ingrid least of all. But lonely outsider Dennis is intrigued by his uncle’s advice that women in Asia are less standoffish.
No comments:
Post a Comment