The Sociologist and the Bear Cub

From September 2012 to May 2013, France was debating the same-sex marriage. During these nine months of legislative gestation, the sociologist Irène Théry explains the stakes of the debate to her son, a film director. From these stories, a cinema of teddy bears, toys and pieces of cardboard emerges. Intimate portrait and national soap opera at the same time, this film makes us rediscover what we all thought we knew: family. "By blending family history with national history, Mathias Théry popularises her mother's ideas while subtly sketching a delicate portrait of this activist, who was also a family woman. The sociologist recounts, for example, how her grandmother, a domestic worker, found it impossible to marry, stigmatised for life by her status as an unwed mother, her mother's determination to marry in order to restore her tarnished honour, and finally how she herself, after wanting to set fire to the institution in 1968, ended up rallying to it, without fully accepting her actions, but with love. Assuming his position as son, the co-director rediscovers, with his soft toys, some of the magical powers of childhood. Thanks to them, the characters are removed from the contingencies of current events. They become archetypes and give the film – this is its great achievement – the scope of a universal moral tale." (Isabelle Regnier, on: lemonde.fr)