Teddy Bear (Romans Durs‪)‬

A masterful portrait of a life coming undone under the pressure of guilt, ambition, and suppressed desires.

“A teddy bear in a child’s bed.” This is the image that comes, unbidden, to the mind of Professor Chabot, a renowned gynecologist, when he happens upon Emma, a young night shift nurse asleep in his clinic. Weighed down by the demands of keeping up appearances in his painstakingly earned picture-perfect life, will Chabot’s feelings of tenderness curve into a darker desire? When the young woman throws herself into the Seine and Chabot starts to receive anonymous death threats, the carefully constructed veneer of his life starts to come apart, sending the doctor down a spiraling path of guilt, memory, remorse, and anger. In Teddy Bear, Georges Simenon constructs a masterful portrait of the poisoning effects of guilt and ambition.