Turning Red: Puberty Can Be Fun
Puberty transforms our bodies into unrecognizable creatures. For 13-year-old Meilin Lee, puberty took the term creature literally.
Directed by Domee Shi, Turning Red follows straight-A student Mei in 2002 Toronto. She is loud, confident, and will not hold back her thoughts. The Chinese-Canadian girl is living a double life as a devoted daughter at home and a boy band-loving jokester at school. She is about to go on her journey into womanhood as she struggles with balancing her two lives. Meilin is like all girls who go through puberty, except she turns into a giant red panda.
In a visually stunning backstory, Mei’s mother, Ming, explains all the women in her family are cursed with turning into a red pandas when they lose control of their emotions. Along with her new body, Mei has new feelings and smells that often come along with puberty. She is introduced as someone who had everything under control and now she is a big hairy wreck.
Pixar takes a different stylistic approach in their newest film. Mei has the vibe of a middle school nerd that is creative and confident. Around her, she has tomboy skater Miriam, inexpressive Priya, and overtly passionate Abby. They are Mei’s emotional safe haven. Pixar creates a glossy, vibrant universe assisted by the fictional band 4 Town providing memorable songs that will be stuck in your head for days. Canadians will be happy to hunt for Easter eggs placed throughout the film only they would know.
Shi utilizes subtle ways to express the personalities of each character. Mei’s grandmother never has hair out of place while her aunties march around in sandals. Mei’s hair movement in panda form also further expresses her shifts between calm and angry. Shi uses these visuals to allow audiences to pick up on whom these characters are without having to explicitly state it in dialogue.
At the center. of this film is a complex emotional relationship between mother and daughter. It mirrors Shi’s previous work on Bao about a child ready to go out on their own. Ming is a balance of overbearing and caring to her daughter’s needs. She wants to avoid the pressures her own mother put on her. The film appears to position the women in Mei’s family as the antagonist but as the conflict is resolved it emphasizes how they are actually victims of generational trauma in the form of a panda.
Turning Red is a rollercoaster of a film that takes different turns as the story unfolds leaving audiences engaged with Mei and her family. It is full of thrills and nostalgia while also feeling like a reinvention of Pixar.