A rush to judgment traps thoughtful 'Bear'
In gay parlance, a bear is an affable, tubby, hirsute gentleman who seeks same. And the new Spanish movie ''Bear Cub" finally gives these men respectful screen time. Mind you, though, the term is never mentioned in the film, so to the uninitiated it'll just seem as if Pedro (Jose Luis Garcia-Perez) happens to have a lot of fat, hairy friends with whom he likes to have sex and do drugs. But when his boho sister, Violeta (Elvira Lindo), swings by his handsome Madrid apartment to drop off her 9-year-old son, Bernardo (David Castillo), Pedro puts away the cocaine, hides the sex toys, and gets high-strung about caring for his nephew.
What ensues is not the sitcom you'd expect. Instead, ''Bear Cub" manages to turn this setup into a fascinating portrait of a man who's forced to think about overhauling his hedonistic lifestyle to accommodate a child. Directed and co-written by Miguel Albaladejo, this is the rare movie to treat a gay man as a character whose problems are his own, not something endemic to homosexuality.
Pedro, who runs a successful dental practice, refuses to commit to his most consistent lover, Manuel (Arno Chevrier), a French bear, but says he doesn't want to live without him either. His ambivalence about commitment extends to young Bernardo, whose mother is frequently running off without him; this time, she and her comically silent stoner boyfriend are off to India, where she's pinched and jailed on a possession charge. You can see that on the horizon, but what it brings out of Pedro is complicated and surprising. He is furious with his sister, and he gets short with Bernardo. But he seems angriest at himself.
Pedro does a commendable job of setting a good example for his nephew, telling his non-bear buddy Javi (Mario Arias) to put the after-dinner joint away. He lets Bernardo cook sausages and chop fruit. He builds him his own bedroom. But when Bernardo learns that Pedro has told him only half the truth about Violeta's protracted absence, he is appalled; like a lot of kids, he places a premium on the truth. Otherwise, the boy lives a pretty good life. And his time with all these gay men has deepened his perception: When he and Pedro go shopping, Bernardo asks whether one of the salesmen was hitting on Pedro.
Nonetheless, Pedro just isn't cut out for all the sacrifices of sudden parenthood. His urge for sex gnaws at him. One night, while Bernardo sleeps at Javi's, Pedro goes cruising around the city, in bars and under bridges. And the movie allows you to sense a subculture where shame has mutated into a pattern of risky thrill-seeking. His decadence is a form of self-destruction, which makes even more sense when other revelations surface about him in the later going. He even bristles at Javi's boast that Bernardo might be gay, too.
Pedro is what a friend of mine calls a ''macho Iberico," which refers to a certain type of cocky, insensitive Spanish man. Pedro can be loving, but he can also be testy, and Garcia-Perez's formidable hard-soft performance captures the conflict between the two as though it were a natural state of mind.
But the movie gives up on the character exploration too soon. It pushes Bernardo's paternal grandmother (Empar Ferrer) into the picture and plunges ''Bear Cub" into an overplotted custody melodrama between her and Pedro, whose indiscretions and refusal to grow up completely have to be punished. Suddenly this careful and patient movie turns cheap and hasty, with unexpected disclosures, desperate curveballs, and crocodile tears. It's not ruinous, but it's not good either. Compared to the harsh judging Pedro eventually gets, the trip that he and Bernardo take to a rock opera seems like subtle commentary now. The show is ''Peter Pan."
Wesley Morris can be reached at wmorris@globe.com.
