Cocoon

Set dur­ing a Berlin sum­mer (an extreme­ly hot one), Leonie Krippendorf’s debut fea­ture, Cocoon, fol­lows 14-year-old Nora (Lena Urzen­dowsky), whose sheep­ish­ness and reluc­tance to step for­ward into adult­hood are embraced by the all-encom­pass­ing glow of the film’s warm cinematography.

Nora tags along in the shad­ow of her out­spo­ken, flir­ta­tious, 16-year-old sis­ter, Jule (Lena Klenke), along with Jule’s best friend, Aylin (Eli­na Vil­dano­va), as they spend their time bask­ing in the sun by the local pool, smok­ing weed and ogling teenage boys from the neighbourhood.

It is abun­dant­ly clear that Nora does not feel com­fort­able in this world, nor is she tru­ly accept­ed there, and so it is no sur­prise that she breaks away to seek solace in the com­pa­ny of Romy (Jel­la Haase), an auda­cious indie girl in her sister’s class with short, ragged blond hair, an androg­y­nous DIY style and a tenac­i­ty to be friends with the boys most desired by Nora’s sister.

The film’s title indi­cates the metaphor of a caterpillar’s life cycle. Nat­ur­al, if not over­done, is the asso­ci­a­tion between a com­ing-of-age film (a queer one at that) and a butterfly’s meta­mor­pho­sis. Krip­pen­dorf empha­sis­es this asso­ci­a­tion by fea­tur­ing a colony of cater­pil­lars that Nora keeps beside her bed, and she swings back to cap­ture the even­tu­al flut­ter­ings of but­ter­flies as the film progresses.

The coor­di­na­tion of the plot and the visu­als depicts a pas­sion­ate com­mit­ment to the film’s female com­ing-of-age sto­ry: as Nora’s con­fi­dence and joy wax and wane with the unfold­ing love sto­ry, the aspect ratio shifts from 4:3 to 16:9 – the screen dilates as would one’s pupils when falling in love. From that moment, with its vignettes of queer teenage ecsta­sy deliv­ered through Nora and Romy’s first Pride parade, rain­bow flags wav­ing through strong rays of sun­light, Nora takes flight. She embraces her jour­ney instead of tak­ing the passenger’s seat.

Moments of young, teenage-girl desire are lin­gered on, includ­ing female mas­tur­ba­tion which is ren­dered through the eyes of the pro­tag­o­nist. Most promi­nent is the por­tray­al of men­stru­a­tion on screen, with Nora’s dis­com­fort and shame tak­ing cen­tre stage rather than lead­ing her to become the sub­ject of humil­i­a­tion from her class­mates – this is by no means a riff on Bri­an De Palma’s Carrie.

The moments that fol­low, instead, are ones that evoke an unteth­ered empa­thy, with Romy imme­di­ate­ly com­ing to Nora’s aid. The scene encom­pass­es kind­ness, friend­ship and an obvi­ous mutu­al under­stand­ing between the two girls that ini­ti­ates a rela­tion­ship. Fur­ther­more, there is no heinous­ness or out­right dis­dain sur­round­ing homo­sex­u­al­i­ty in the film, echoed by the accep­tance that Nora is met with after she comes out for the first time unprompt­ed to a boy who tries to make a pass at her at a par­ty. There are no hate­ful looks or cru­el words, just a relaxed smile and the utter­ance of, ​“I think it’s cool.”

While heart­break is immi­nent as it is a com­ing-of-age film, the absence of hope­less­ness brings a light­ness to the film not begot­ten by hol­low­ness, and you may even find your­self with a melan­choly smile, as Nora’s meta­mor­pho­sis is com­plete: she breaks out of her cocoon.