Ich dachte, ich wäre tot (1972)

Seventeen-year-old Caroline has dropped out of school and taken a job as a sales assistant in a grocery store. But she is bored there and gets into trouble with her boss. She also often clashes with her parents, who want to convince her to get vocational training or finish school. She breaks up with her fiancé, Ulf, in an argument, and a wealthy, somewhat older friend who buys her a new dress turns out, to her surprise, to be married. After breaking up with Ulf, she comes home one evening to find her parents cold and dismissive, so she goes to her room and attempts suicide by taking pills. She is taken to the hospital, where she gradually recovers and tells a psychologist about her family problems. A few days later, her older sister comes to visit. Caroline tells her she does not want to go back home, so she moves in with her sister, her sister’s husband, and their child. Her sister herself left home at an early age because of conflicts with their parents, and married young. They keep Caroline’s whereabouts from their parents, and when their mother comes to check on them, Caroline hides. Because she has fond childhood memories of life in the countryside, she takes a job on a farm. But there she is faced with hard work and unpleasant tasks such as mucking out stalls and slaughtering chickens. She returns to her parents, and during a conversation in the kitchen, admits that she hid at her sister’s. When her mother starts in on another lengthy moral lecture, Caroline grabs a bottle of tomato sauce and pours it first over her mother and then over herself. The scolding turns into general laughter. Caroline seems to have grown up and learned to endure conflicts rather than run away from them.