Kim Kold as Dennis in TEDDY BEAR (Film Movement)

Following up on his short film “Dennis,” which was an official selection at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival, writer-director Mads Matthiesen’s first feature sees the same eponymous character, played by champion Danish bodybuilder Kim Kold, looking to break free from his needy mother’s grasp and find love for himself. Dennis takes his cousin’s advice and heads for Thailand, where a family friend awaits with a harem of eligible local girls ready to wed lonely Westerners. Dennis, a deeply moral 38-year-old man, instead meets an older widow—a gym owner, as luck would have it—and the two must weather the fallout from Dennis’s existing domestic constraints—namely, his mother (Elsebeth Steentoft).

Matthiesen, a keen observer of the brazen sex tourism in Southeast Asia, offers us a view of a world where thousands of rich white men have their fantasies fulfilled by masses of underprivileged teenagers. Dennis, a nearly seven-foot-tall behemoth of rippling muscle and athletic prowess, is as lonely as they come, unable—both physically and psychologically—to find a partner. With an overbearing and selfish live-in mother to boot, traveling to Thailand certainly seems like his only viable option. But he rejects the pay-to-play system in a seedy tourist town in favor of a more genuine hookup. Little does he know that when it actually happens, he’ll have bigger problems if he’s ever going to face his mother again.

Kold is a natural as the gentlehearted giant. He’s smart, funny, and conveys a true shyness that I’m sure comes with always being twice the size of everyone around him. Kold’s performance and Matthiesen’s skillful work allow scenes to have a naturalism in which meaning doesn’t always immediately make itself known. Dennis’s early conversation with his newlywed cousin, for instance, takes a surprising turn when it’s obvious that Dennis has similar intentions. Though he takes a largely interior emotional journey, Dennis wears his heart on his sleeve just long enough to earn our attention.

Matthiesen’s easily grasped story is the only thing unsatisfying here. It’s a little predictable for Dennis to turn down the easy women, and the woman he does find comes along a little too conveniently. Also, upon returning to Denmark and his mother’s controlling household, Matthiesen paints a simplistic portrait of the poor woman. She’s all too monstrous. I’d have been more intrigued had the co-dependency psychosis not merely been hers but partially Dennis’s as well.

I see huge things for this director, though. Teddy Bear is so broad a story that I wouldn’t be surprised if an international breakthrough is in the cards for the movie and its director. For Kim Kold’s memorable performance alone, check this one out, and if you’re interested in a director who can effortlessly induce an emotional response in an audience, this is your guy. (The criticism levied at modern day bride imports is equally uplifting.) All said and done, it’s a fine film, if a bit formulaic. The meek shall inherit the earth, even if they do outweigh us by 200 pounds.