Film Notes: Cocoon / Kokon
by Kitty Munnings
Germany | 2020 | 95m | 15 | subtitles
Director: Leonie Krippendorff
Starring: Lena Urzendowsky, Jella Haase, Lena Klenke
In her second feature film, writer-director Leonie Krippendorff vibrantly depicts a teenager’s evolution towards self-acceptance. In her family flat, Nora (Lena Urzendowsky) cultivates a microcosm of safety for her caterpillars. She lingers at the edges of her sister Jule’s (Lena Klenke) social world, observing the actions of others ascending through puberty with a dream-like gaze. When her own development takes Nora by surprise, support appears in the form of cool girl Romy (Jella Haase). As their relationship progresses, Nora learns to shed her shy exterior through self-discovery.
At the Iris Prize LGBT+ Film Festival this year, Cocoon won Best Feature and Urzendowsky won Best Performance in a Female Role. Jury chair Lewis Bayley stated that the film captured ‘the innocence of self-discovery … explored with nuance and authenticity.’ On the strength of the film, Variety listed Krippendorff as one of the ten European talents to watch in 2020.
To create the film, the 35-year-old writer-director drew from her own memories of teenagerhood, but also researched the generational differences that would affect teenagers in 2018, such as the integration of social media and technology. ‘With the digital possibilities, everyone having a smartphone, you can express yourself in a creative way. I think many young people are doing this,’ Krippendorff explained to Teddy Award. The film’s use of phones gives an insight into the characters’ perspective, as they use them to transform and explore their city.
The city in question is Berlin, home to the central cast and crew — the young male actors were even sourced from the building used for Nora’s home, in order to gain a realistic experience of the environment. Cinematographer Martin Neumeyer captures Nora’s magical perspective on film, reflecting the heat of the summer and making the central young women jar colourfully with the concrete scenery. ‘There is something cinematic in Berlin’, stated Krippendorff at the film’s premiere, but that ‘not so much has been captured and, above all, not from such a female perspective.’
Krippendorff favours a naturalistic approach in her direction, identifying that she wanted a ‘documentary element’ in the film. During extensive rehearsals, actors had the freedom to improvise and nurture organic relationships to connect with their characters. ‘They’re all at this age where they develop what is feminine for them,’ Krippendorff told Teddy Award. ‘I think that’s a very exciting time, if you have so many pictures of what feminine could be that you have to question everything.’ The concept of Cocoon began with a girl struggling with her first period. Krippendorff wanted to share the reality of the experience with an audience, rather than the aestheticised version that is more commonly portrayed in media, because, as she said to Spätvorstellung at the premiere, ‘the transformation from child to woman is very physical and sometimes painful’.
Krippendorff’s debut film, Looping (2016), similarly intertwines discovery of love, sexual realisation, and the power of feminine support to young women’s growth. It starred Jella Haase, who appears here as Romy. She told Frameline that Cocoon ‘was a joy to shoot and to perform’ because, when acting as her 16-year-old character, ‘it really felt like going through all the things [for the] first time — falling in love, first time drinking alcohol, all the things. It was like falling into them again’. Comparing the experiences of creating Looping and Cocoon, Krippendorf stated to Teddy Award that they both ‘are very intimately told … out of the stomach rather than out of the head, so, as an audience, you really have to feel the film’.
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