'Bear Cub," no Disney animal movie, is a Spanish film with an agenda on its sleeve. It adds up to a lifestyle statement.
Jose Luis Garcia-Perez is bearishly appealing as Pedro, a gay and very single Madrid dentist who virtually inherits his sister's son after she gets into trouble abroad. The kid, 9, acted with simple charm by David Castillo, may himself be gay (this is dangled) and soon gently bonds to wary but well-meaning Pedro.
The dramatic hooks link up obviously. The missing mother, though affectionate, is too flaky and selfish to fully be a mother, so is not greatly missed. A conservative granny who wants to take the boy away from Madrid is not inhuman, but is a virtual museum of Franco era values, and she resorts to nasty tactics verging on blackmail.
Emotions run hot and Spanish, and whenever the core story threatens to sag there's another burst of gay machismo, with drinking and smoking and some drugs, yet nothing very queenly. Pedro is a big man like nearly all of his lovers, burly studs built like trucks with beards.
All the bears like the cub. A "go-go" girl baby-sitter provides her own fizz. At times, this seems like an unusual outpost of Club Med.
The scenes of familial warmth make a curious mix with scenes of night cruising on the street and in a furtively lighted gay bar. Director Luis Miguel Albaladejo has an essential, rather sweet earnestness, but we sense that he likes pushing touchy buttons. He might have skipped the snappy line, "I'd like to see a pedophile try to get near my fourth-graders."
The ending broadly winks its ambiguity about the now teenaged boy's sexual orientation. While that is viable (he's not yet a man), it is also teasing. Much of the film is about showing the bright, resilient lad how to respect Pedro's gay way of life, yet without obvious recruiting – and AIDS is confronted only to be gently pushed back into the shadows.
