A hilarious and moving tribute to the power of friendship, family, and self-acceptance, Domee Shi’s “Turning Red” is a delight from start to finish. Pixar’s latest tells the story of Mei Lee (Rosalie Chiang), a 13-year-old Chinese Canadian girl struggling to balance her burgeoning individuality and her sense of duty to her mother. As the middleschooler explains it, the “No. 1 rule in [her] family” is to honor her parents. But she’s finding it increasingly difficult to honor them as well as herself.
Set in Toronto in 2002, the pic sees Mei waking up to find her body transformed after a truly cringe-inducing experience involving her erotically-charged art, her crush, and her mother, an encounter that is somehow even more awkward — and funnier — than it sounds. As momentous an occasion as getting her period for the first time would’ve been, the pubescent teen undergoes a much more startling metamorphosis. She’s horrified to discover that she’s suddenly changed into a red panda. It’s her destiny, though no one bothered to let her know about it. A magic spell has affected female members of her family for generations — “a little quirk,” as her mom describes it.
Mei comes to realize that she has some control over her panda side. When she’s calm, she reverts back to her human self. But she’s warned that “any strong emotion will release the panda,” and thanks to her intense devotion to a boy band, passionate enthusiasm for her BFFs, tension with her mother, and a feud with a classmate, she’s nearly always feeling strong emotions. She’s inclined toward learning how to manage the panda, but her family is pressuring her to participate in a ritual that will essentially imprison the panda within. “My whole life I’ve been perfect little Mei Mei, but maybe I like this new me,” she says.
“The main inspiration was my own life growing up. Like, I was Meilin Lee. I was that nerdy, excitable, tween girl that was just struggling with being her mom’s perfect daughter and the raging hormonal beast inside me that got into fights with her every day. Making this movie was my attempt to unpack what was going on during that time — not just from my point of view, but from my mom’s as well,” Shi told Today’s Parent.
The filmmaker is the first woman to ever direct a Pixar pic solo. Brenda Chapman co-directed “Brave.”
Asked how working with “an all-female team [helped her] tell this female-centered story,” Shi responded, “It made us bolder in our choices and the story. All of those spicy elements in the movie, like the scene with her mom and the pads in the bathroom, all those scenes with Mei going down her lusty drawing spiral, the weird boy crushes… All of that was in the first version of the movie. We never shied away from telling those uncomfortable, cringey, awkward details of girl adolescence because a lot of us have experienced it. So any time one of us would be hesitant to include a scene, there would be a chorus of women going, ‘no, push it more! You remember how it felt! Make the audience feel that way too!'”
Shi hopes that the film starts conversations “and that we can eventually just normalize talking about puberty and menstruation and not feel so weird about it. But until then, please watch this entertaining movie about a red panda running through Toronto,” she joked.
The film is also starting conversations about inclusivity thanks to its cast of characters. “I wanted to depict what my friend group looked like growing up, and there were a lot of Asian and South Asian people in my social groups. If we’re gonna set this movie in Toronto, we had to do that. But I was really excited to also just showcase how different each girl is and how distinctive each of their personalities are. And each girl is kind of based off of a real friend that I think all of us have had,” Shi said. She added, “I grew up around Asian culture, I love Asian culture. I get excited especially when I’m able to depict Asian food and really celebrate and educate and show audiences around the world what I think is cool and worth celebrating and worth telling stories about. It’s really important right now with all that’s going on in the world and with the rise in racism against Asians. Celebrating these stories and showcasing stories with Asian faces with Asians behind the camera really just proves that we’re here and we deserve to have stories written about us and that our culture deserves to be celebrated and that we deserve to feel safe,” she emphasized.
“Turning Red” is now streaming on Disney+.
