Cinema Review Bamse :: A Lucky Man Touching movie about Flemming 'Bamse' Jørgensen's life story
By Nicki Bruun, ekkofilm.dk 19. aug. 2022 | 14:10
Touching film about Flemming 'Bamse' Jørgensen finds a perfect balance between driving sentimentality and cheerful butt-kicking comedy.
A LUCKY MAN is a warm and compassionate film that tells Bamse’s life story with his biggest hits as the soundscape. --dfi
.. So the film 'Bamse' is a revival of a popular entertainer who once made everyone sing and dance. But also a biographical film about a man who struggled with a harsh father and a traumatic childhood – and with 14th place in the Eurovision Song Contest. --Information
Flemming Bamse Jørgensen's music does not immediately produce grandiose images on the retina, but the singer's life is full of the stuff movies are made of.
As the son of a prostitute mother of twelve, he was handed over to an orphanage. Here he was adopted by a wealthy couple who wished an heir to their Rubber factory in Viby.
But already as a child, Flemming was drawn to the world of music, and despite his father's disapproval, the young man threw himself into acting as a fiddler in the Danish country.
Bamse (The Lukky Man) shows with black-and-white flashbacks to the 1950s how the main character's father harshly teaches young Flemming that he should consider himself happy for the life he has been given. By implication, he must also be grateful and follow the path in life that the father has planned for him!
It is a universal, moving story that as an adult, Flemming Bamse Jørgensen tries to grow out of that shadow, while he entertains with hits such as In A Boat That’s Itty-Bitty and Why Does Louise Go Dancing?
The partner couple Henrik Ruben Genz and Bo hr. Hansen have collaborated on the script, while the former is responsible for the direction. They were most recently on the field with Erna at war (2020) and Word of God(2017).
Bamse (The Lukky Man) balances amazingly well between the funny and the sad in a number of poignant scenes.
The good-natured Bamse appears charmingly down-to-earth when he writes his lyrics with the help of a sausage man played by Jacob Haugaard. At the same time, you understand the singer's existential anguish and fear of giving free rein to emotions on the late solo album Stand by Me from 1999.
As it should be in a biopic, the film takes turns between ups and downs in the main character's life.
The joy of winning the Danish Eurovision Song Contest in 1980 with the love ballad Always on my Mind is replaced by disappointment at the boring result in the European final in the Netherlands. After that bland, even high schools didn't want Bamse to come and play. He has to settle for embarrassing solo performances in major centres.
It gets a bit ass-ball rocking every now and then, but with a compressed playing time of one and a half hours, Bamse never makes a bigger deal than the film can manage to follow to the door.
In constantly sounding Jutish, the film is not afraid of latrine low comedy, as when Lars Ranthe's manager John Madsen repeats the joke: "It must have full gas in the bowels!" The manager's failed smoking cessation is also a running joke on the lighter side. But between the cheerful elements you see a beating dramatic heart, that you involuntarily are gripped by.
Anders W. Berthelsen portrays Teddy Bamse as a tormented soul who finds happiness on stage and in the bosom of his family. Johanne Louise Schmidt is the film's greatest hero as the most generous wife in world history. Käte is always ready with wise advice and is happy to serve food, drinks and Cocio at home in Hasselager when Teddy’s Friends (Bamses Venner) has to finish a card game after a concert.
The film allows itself to be liberatingly sentimental when Flemming sings a song in church in honor of the biological sister he only got to know shortly before her death. And you eagerly await reconciliation with the critical father, who has called his son a circus clown, but must learn the value of what it means to be a director in your own life.
These are well-known and often tested means and methods, but they nevertheless work perfectly as intended, because the film rests in itself.
Flemming Bamse Jørgensen died on New Year's Day 2011 of a heart attack at the age of just 63. The film about him may not rewrite the musician's legacy, but it gives a striking insight into a life that you are glad to have gotten to know better.
You leave the cinema with a tear in the corner of your eye and a heart-warming smile on your lips ready to sing.