Sunday Review: Mother of Mine and Teddy Bear

Marjaana Maijala plays Signe

Three painful mamas

By Morris Dean

Two of the last three feature films my wife and I have watched happen to have had very strong mother elements. I guess lots of films do, since mothers play a central role in most people's lives—hopefully not as painful a role as in the two films here reviewed.

The 2005 Finnish-Swedish film Mother of Mine, directed by Klaus Härö [Finnish: Äideistä parhain: Swedish: Den bästa av mödrar] reflects a real situation set against the backdrop of World War II, when thousands of Finnish children were evacuated to neutral Sweden.
    Nine-year-old Eero feels abandoned by his mother in Finland and not at all at home with his Swedish mother, who has her own painful reasons for not warmly welcoming the boy. I don't suppose that the film's slow pace will appeal to most of my readers, but the young actor (Topi Majaniemi)'s portrayal is powerfully engaging, his welcoming Swedish father Hjalmar is played by the actor Michael Nyqvist, whom we're seeing a lot of since he became familiar from The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (the original, Swedish version, in which he plays the journalist Mikael Blomkvist), and the close relationship that develops between the boy and his Swedish mother, Signe (Marjaana Maijala), is masterfully developed.
    Not so satisfying, to me at least, is the understanding reached, through flashes back and forward sixty years, between the boy and his biological mother.

The 2012 Danish film Teddy Bear, directed by Mads Matthiesen [10 Timer til Paradis ("10 hours to paradise")], is instantly engaging because of the stunning visual of the hulking bodybuilder Dennis (Kim Kold), especially alongside his diminutive mother, Ingrid (Elsebeth Steentoft), who looks even smaller than she is next to Dennis.
    Coming-of-age films usually tell the story of someone around twenty, so the coming of age of a 38-year-old giant is striking, especially when the giant is someone so soft-spoken, gentle, unpresuming, and accepting as Dennis, whose mother's manipulation to keep him away from girls and at home is painful to watch, for Dennis's sake.

    Dennis's uncle has recently met and married a young woman from Thailand, and he tells Dennis where to go to find himself a wife. The ensuing look at the sleaze of sex-tourism is fascinating, if rather...well, sleazy.
    How does it work out for Dennis? I enthusiastically hope that you will want to watch Teddy Bear to find out. It's based on the director's 2007 short film Dennis (18 minutes), which starred Kold in the same role.
    We watched both films through Netflix instant download. Unfortunately, Dennis is not currently available that way. Apparently, it's included among Special Features on the DVD for Teddy Bear.
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Copyright © 2013 by Morris Dean

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