“Turning Red” - Film Review
Directed by Oscar-winner Domee Shi, Turning Red is the latest film from Pixar and the first film from that company solo-directed by a woman. It tells the story of Mei Lee (Rosalie Chiang), a thirteen-year-old girl growing up in Toronto in 2002. She’s confident in her dorkiness, has three best friends who are inseparable, and parents (Sandra Oh and Orion Lee) she would do anything for. Because she wants to be the perfect daughter for her mother, Mei sidelines things she’s passionate about like boy bands, her friends, and drawing.
One fateful night, Mei’s mother discovers drawings of a boy Mei has a crush on. This leads to her mother embarrassing her in front of the object of her affections and sends Mei into a downward spiral. As she goes to bed that night, her dreams are plagued with images of red pandas, an animal who has a special connection to her ancestors. When she wakes up, Mei finds that she has turned into a red panda herself. According to her mother, because of a choice one of their ancestors made, all the women in the family turn into red pandas when they experience any sort of strong emotion. Her mother assures her that there’s a ritual that can be performed during the red moon that will lock Mei’s red panda away forever.
The main criticism about Turning Red has been its specificity–that if you were not a preteen Asian girl growing up in Toronto in the early 2000s, it is simply impossible to form any sort of emotional connection to Mei. Hilarious that this sort of criticism didn’t also emerge when Cars came out because, as far as I’m aware, there have been no reported cases of humans living as cars.
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If you look at Pixar’s filmography, their main characters have included merpeople, toys, bugs, monsters, fish, rats, elves, personified emotions, and robots. In fact, of Pixar’s twenty-five films, a mere nine feature humans as one of the main characters. And yet, when movies like Toy Story 3 came out, there was no widespread criticism about how it’s impossible to feel emotionally connected to plastic toys as they’re about to go into an incinerator. The audience is invested in the characters because of the life that’s given to them by the artists and the screenwriters.
Movies typically fall into two categories. They either reflect a world and lived experiences that audience members know, or they are a look at a life and a worldview that audiences may have been completely unaware of. Two audience members sitting next to each other will experience the movie in one of those two ways, and can still leave the theatre feeling like they gained something. Of course it feels great to see yourself on screen. There will be people watching who will recognize the streets Mei walked on and the TTC card she was so proud of. They’ll be able to smell the dishes her father makes and acutely know what it’s like to grow up the way Mei did. Others will have never set foot in Toronto, won’t recognize the CN Tower, and won’t know the acute love one can have with the member of a boy band.
But that’s the point of movies. They’re supposed to teach something about yourself or give you a new lens through which to view your own life and the world. Specificity, especially coming from a genuine place, can actually have a grand appeal. All specificity does is lend honesty and truth to the story being crafted. Turning Red is so intricate and layered because it takes place in the world director Shi knows intimately. She’s Chinese-Canadian and grew up in the same Toronto Mei did. That care and attention to detail are what make the film successful; it’s extraordinarily well-written with a clear purpose in mind. There’s a goal, a lesson, and a journey that Shi wants to take you on, and it works so well because it’s the path she knows like the back of her hand.
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No matter who the lead character is, whether it be a race car, a clownfish, or a boy-band-loving preteen girl, if there’s heart behind them, it’s easy to see glimpses of our own truths. So many moments in Turning Red are visceral, rocketing the audience back to the time when they were thirteen years old and filled with more anxiety, anger, frustration, and love than they knew what to do with. When Mei is clashing with her mother because she wants to simultaneously honor her mother and honor the person Mei is becoming, it feels as though the scene has been lifted from actual conversations. Like most kids growing up, the person Mei’s mother wants her to be and the person she’s growing into are at odds with each other and the struggle that plays out is personified by the impending ritual to forever banish Mei’s red panda.
Despite Mei’s otherworldly ability to turn into a red panda, this is perhaps Pixar’s most true-to-life tale. There’s a scene early in the movie when Mei’s mom mistakes Mei’s panic one morning to be about getting her first period, not turning into a panda. It’s the first film that addresses attraction and crushes as something deep and meaningful to a teenager. Most of the love interests or stories from previous films are very stiff. While robots like Wall-E and Eve may make us cry when their robot claws hold one another, those stories are missing the lust and the humanity. They certainly cannot portray the all-consuming crush of a preteen.
Turning Red is a noticeable departure from more recent Pixar fare with an animation style all its own. It exudes the strength and confidence Mei learns over the course of the movie and that we should all strive to match. Yes, Turning Red is about a specific life and a specific culture, but its specificity is its greatest strength. A lesson we can all learn.
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