Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1469382
a p r i l • m ay • j u n e 2 0 2 2 c g w 1 1 L et's face it, life can be hard at times. And when you are transitioning from childhood into adolescence, it seems that life is hard all the time. At least, that is the consensus of nearly everyone, boy or girl, during puberty. That includes Mei Lee, the lead character in Pixar's latest 3D animated film, Turning Red. The movie, Pixar's 25th animated feature, is a coming-of-age story. Indeed, it hasn't been that long ago since the studio delved into this topic last summer with Luca, about two adolescents living a carefree summer of their youth on the Italian Riviera (see "Trans- formative," CGW, July/August/September 2021). For them, facing the next stage of their life was relatively without drama — though the same could not be said about their efforts to hide the fact that they are sea monsters who turn human when on land. When we first meet Mei in Turning Red, she is a very content, focused youngster who really seems to have her life under control (as much as possible for a person her age). She is a very confident girl, the mini version of her very well-put-together mother. She lives in Toronto, excels in school, and honors the Chinese customs and traditions of her family. Then, one day, everything changes. That is when her body begins to change… into a giant red panda. Suddenly, navigating adolescence has become all the more challenging. Directing the film is Domee Shi, whose animated short film Bao, about an elderly woman adopting a dumpling, won an Oscar for Best Animated Short Film in 2019. According to her, she had been asked many times why the little dumpling in Bao was a boy. The answer, she says, is because she only had eight minutes to tell that story; for a mother-daughter story, she would have needed much more time. Well, now she has an entire feature film to do so with Turning Red. H Sry There is a lot of story parallelism between the creator/director and her subject. Born in China to Chinese parents, Shi and her family emigrated to Canada when she was very young. Like Mei Lee in the movie, she is an only child and was very close to her parents, particularly her mother. "We did everything together. We commuted together to work and to school in downtown Toronto, we went on mother-daughter bus trips and vacations together," says Shi. And then, adolescence began, and like most children, Shi started to grow up. And change. "I started getting into anime, comics, and hanging out with my friends more and more, and less and less with my mom. She didn't understand why I was obsessed with these fic- tional characters with huge eyes and colorful, spiky hair. And she defi- nitely didn't understand whatever this was [that was happening]," says Shi. "I was being pulled in one direction, but my duty and loyalty to my parents and my mom were pulling me in another direction." As Shi notes, Turning Red was inspired by this universal struggle of growing up and trying to figure out how to honor your parents but also staying true to yourself. In a way, it is an "East meets West" story, as well. In the film, this struggle starts when Mei one day turns into a giant red panda — which, unbeknownst to Mei, is a blessing/curse bestowed on the female line of her family. "That sets off this internal conflict within herself. Because up until that point, Mei thinks she has it all figured out, like we all did before we wake up one day and realize all of a sudden, we're covered in body hair, we smell funky, our emotions are all over the place, and we're hungry, like all the time," says Shi. To this end, the filmmaker is using the red panda as an adorable metaphor for the scary, unadorable, awkward, and cringy changes we go through during this age. "More specifically, we wanted to explore the nuances of Asian parent-child relationships and dealing with change and all of the intergenerational conflict and how it shapes who we become. Turning Red is quirky and surreal, but at its The film was helmed by Pixar's first all-female-led production team.