The 38-year-old bodybuilder Dennis would really like to find true love. He has never had a girlfriend and lives alone with his mother in a suburb of Copenhagen. When his uncle marries a girl from Thailand, Dennis decides to try his own luck on a trip to Pattaya, as it seems that love is easier to find in Thailand. He knows that his mother would never accept another woman in his life, so he lies and tells her that he is going to Germany. Dennis has never been out traveling before and the hectic Pattaya is a huge cultural shock for him. The intrusive Thai girls give big bruises to Dennis' naive picture of what love should be like, and he is about to lose hope when he unexpectedly meets the Thai woman Toi.
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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.
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.
I've been desiring to see this film for months. When I finally had the opportunity I was fully prepared to be swooned by a beautiful story of a lonely man just looking for love.I loved the reversal of character attributes between Dennis and his mother. The movie was set up for the transition of Dennis from his solitary shell to become a man of his own choosing.Technically this does happen as can be seen from the previews, but the way it happened was very much lack-luster in my opinion. I wanted to be moved emotionally, I wanted to get involved in the storyline.But in the end I wound up watching a very decidedly awkward relationship unfold between all the characters without any real power. The acting was very fitting, the plot was elegant, but there was no life, no desire, no emotion.This movie was more like the firework you've been saving for the time your parents aren't around only to find that it fizzles and pops rather than bangs.
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.
