Review: Teddy Bear

14th August 2018

Paddy Chayefsky wrote Marty in 1953. The romantic drama tells the story of a middle-aged butcher who lives with his mother and longs after a loving relationship. It was Chayefsky’s ode to the common man, his Barton Fink moment, if you will. Rod Steiger played the lead in the original teleplay and his performance was praised for being a stark, simple portrayal of a lonely man.

Mads Matthiesen’s 2012 Danish drama Teddy Bear owes a lot to Chayefsky’s teleplay. Whether purposefully or coincidentally, they both share similar themes, similar ideas and similar central performances. But they also share an honesty.

There’s a moment in Teddy Bear where Kim Kold’s lonely bodybuilder Dennis sits across the table from his mother and tells her what he really thinks. It’s a quiet moment, shot simplistically with no emphasis on style, and in a lesser film might feel simply like any other scene but in the hands of Matthiesen it’s elevated and the tension that has been subtly bubbling under the surface of the film threatens to explode. It never does, but the scene is tense none the less.

This calmness is Teddy Bear’s biggest success as a movie. Nothing here is explosive or shocking or particularly all that interesting or original, but it’s shot with such care and honesty that it’s difficult not to enjoy. The story itself is pretty much a straight coming of age tale. At the age of thirty-eight Dennis still struggles to form relationships. In the hopes of growing up and becoming his own person he leaves his overbearing mother at home and heads to Thailand in search of love.

It’s simple, it never twists, and it’s not got an awful lot of surprises along the way, but it’s sweet and honest and there is a sincerity about it that captures our attention.

A lot of this, to be fair, is down to Kold. He plays Dennis with a heart and a sensitivity we don’t often get from protagonists of his size. It can be a little jarring but at the same time you can’t help but warm to him. He’s so sweet and loveable that any fault within the film just seems to melt away beneath his performance. He’s the Teddy Bear of the title, a gentle giant who wants nothing more than to grow up and be his own man.

And don’t get me wrong, the film does have its flaws. At certain points it becomes difficult to believe Kold’s Dennis could really be so out of touch. He misunderstands what is an obvious arrangement with a prostitute as being some kind of date, and then later he returns to where he was introduced to her without recognising the establishment for what it is. But when Kold spends every moment looking like he’s either going to burst under the anxiety of social interaction or run away and hide until all the people have gone you simply can’t help but align yourself with him.

The entire film is better simply for Kold’s performance, and he really is quiet something. Since Teddy Bear he’s appeared in both Fast & Furious 6 and Star Trek Beyond, but he’s severely under utilised in both. He has a presence on the screen that goes further than simply his performance. And while it is a wonderful performance in and of itself, Kold is just watchable, and that’s something that goes a long way to making everything here feel more purposeful and more engaging.

Shot with a stark realism but filtered through an almost dreamlike lens, the film continues to flow along at its own pace, for the most part it’s almost silent, and never forgets to keep its focus on our hulking protagonist. In a way it reminded me of Wes Anderson. Not so much in style, this is a far more simply shot and realistically composed movie, but in that awkward way that people interact without saying what they really mean.

When Dennis’ elderly mother Ingrid (played by a vicious and spikey Elsebeth Steentoft) is so bluntly honest about how she feels it throws us off guard, placing us firmly in Dennis’ shoes. But even she, by the end, has been cast in a solemn and sympathetic light. She’s not the monster we’ve been led to believe but instead just an old woman terrified of being left alone.

It’s not that there’s anything here that’s going to drastically alter the way you view the world or the way you view cinema, it never does anything particularly unique or impressive, but it’s a simple tale told incredibly effectively, and that’s something we don’t see much of these days. Perhaps there’s more of Chayefsky’s Marty than I originally gave it credit for, and perhaps an engaging coming of age drama in 2018 is as much about looking back to the past as it is about its characters looking toward the future.

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