Spoilers for the movie Cuckoo below
OK but I am just having so many feelings about the movie Cuckoo and how it's about familial bonds, particularly familial bonds between women.
The movie is about Cuckoos, specifically their brood parasitism. Cuckoo creatures replace human embryos with their own young, letting them be raised by human families, with the families none the wiser about their offspring.
But even before anything supernatural has occurred in the movie, Gretchen is already in the position of a replaced child. She lives with her dad, sure, but she is positioned as a chick without a nest. When she first appears, she's not even in the family car when they arrive in their new home, instead riding with the movers. All care and resources are diverted from her; when she's in great need in the hospital, her father's care is still focused on her younger half-sister Alma. Even Gretchen's nest, her mother's house in the States, is taken away from her.
And maybe some of this is supernatural influence, but a lot of it is just mundane neglect from a shitty dad, who would rather focus his care & resources on his younger child. Even before we learn anything more about Alma, she's positioned as a cuckoo's child, just in the everyday terms of imbalanced families. Gretchen is tied to both her father and Alma biologically, but it's clear that she is not really considered their family.
Except when we learn that Alma is not all she appears to be, that she is indeed a cuckoo child who is biologically untethered to Gretchen & her father -- we also learn she is the only one who cares at all for Gretchen, who tries to look after her by summoning her mother. It doesn't work, it can't work, but Alma is still the only one recognizing her sister's pain and trying to care for her.
Which is the point at which it stops mattering that Alma is not a human child, that she never was one, that she is a literal Cuckoo instead of just a metaphorical replacement. She becomes family only when the truth of her biological ties is revealed, because her origin doesn't matter to her tie to her sister.
And those sisterly ties save both of their lives, Gretchen & Alma wrapped protectively around each other in the face of danger, the both of them acting as protector and protectee. I've seen people online criticize this sequences as ridiculous, but it's such a powerful image, these two girls shielding each other and triumphing simply because they trust each other to protect them over the men with guns who claim to be their saviors.
All of which ends with what I have jokingly called 'lesbian Nativity imagery', Gretchen & her escape partner driving off into the sunset with a miraculous child in tow, away from the men who had been using them & the mothers who'd pitted them against each other. And I just think that's beautiful.
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