Lena Urzendowsky (left) and Jella Haase in "Kokon"
Photo: Edition SalzgeberJule is not a bad big sister. It goes without saying that she forces cotton balls soaked in orange juice on her younger sister Nora, "because the models do that against hunger," is nonsense. But otherwise the 16-year-old takes loving care of the 14-year-old, takes her to parties and the outdoor pool, comforts her when her mother is back on a drinking spree and has left her children with nothing but moldy cream cheese in the fridge.
An even better big sister, however, is Leonie Krippendorff. As the writer and director of "Kokon", she takes on all of Nora's questions and needs that overwhelm others. Krippendorff explains with the greatest tenderness and care that Nora wants role models other than models, that she is seriously interested in school, and above all that she feels more drawn to girls than to boys. If your story wouldn't take place in the record summer of 2018: You couldn't get any warmer in your heart than in this film.
"Looping" is the name of the first directorial work by the now 35-year-old Krippendorff. Three women of different ages in very different life crises meet each other in a psychiatry and approach each other, both platonic and erotic. The title describes the narrative movement of the film; on the one hand, things overturn in him, on the other hand, they also turn a little in circles.
With Jella Haase and Mary-Lou Sellem, two of the three main actresses from "Looping" are now also in "Kokon": Haase is Romy, the classmate Nora falls in love with; Sellem briefly appears as Romy's mother. The fact that the two no longer appear as somehow lovers, but rather as mother and daughter according to their age, is exemplary for "Kokon". Everything here is a little clearer and more conventional than in Krippendorff's wildly poetic debut film. The fact that she lets "Kokon" play during a single summer already corresponds to one of the most common topoi of the coming-of-age film, namely "the summer that changes everything".
Pointers for life
But the conventions mark a different field here, because Krippendorff tells of a lesbian first love. For them, German cinema usually only has words that are just as stupid as the biology teacher who Nora confides in: "There are many ways to feel close to one another," says the teacher. Of course, this doesn't help with very specific feelings for another person. And so Nora sets out on her own to find out what it really is between Romy and her.
Embodied by a grandiose Lena Urzendowsky ("The White Rabbit", "Dark"), Nora only seems to consist of huge eyes that devour the world with all its possibilities. But it is more resistant than it initially seems. With every approach to the alternative-minded Romy, who hangs around on site for a trailer and breaks into the swimming pool at night, Nora moves away from her sister Jule ("how to sell drugs online (fast)" - star Lena Klenke) and her rigid ideas of how a girl must be and above all how she should look.
Krippendorff does not denounce Jule and her friends, who are constantly checking on Instagram to see how they are being received. Rather, it shows how great the fun and freedom can be when you go your own way. In which directions he could go if you are queer, Krippendorff makes it clear with a few overly clear finger points. Suddenly the book "The Unease of the Sexes" by Judith Butler, the key work of current gender studies, appears on the mother's birthday table. And just as suddenly, after a few kisses between Romy and Nora, it goes to the CSD, where the two demonstrate for the rights of LGBTQI *.
Such pedagogical dangling movements can be found stupid, as they stand in the way of narrative unity and elegance. But if you talk about the beginnings of your first queer love, why not put your first traces in queer culture? Krippendorff obviously feels responsible for her characters and for the younger ones in her audience, who may have questions similar to Nora - the director as a big sister.
But don't worry, she's a cool big sister too. In addition to love and coming-of-age films, "Kokon" is also a Kotti film. Everything in it plays on and around the Kottbusser Tor in Berlin-Kreuzberg. During the day the girls hang out in the Prinzenbad, in the evening they climb the stairs to Café Kotti singing "Fotzen im Club" by Sxtn. The area does not look beautiful, nationally decried as a crime hotspot, but neither does it look scandalously ugly. It is simply the setting for life, and in Nora's case for the summer, which changes everything.
Icon: The mirror