NO PLACE LIKE HOME
Award-winning Canadian filmmaker doesn't shy away from her familiar Toronto roots
It's nice to be seen. That's a sentiment that can be felt by a community, an ethnicity, a sex, even a city. Turning Red covers all those groups and more.
Let's look at the city first. A first feature from Canadian animator Domee Shi, Turning Red is set in Toronto's Chinatown in the spring of 2002. And not halfway, either. TTC streetcars rumble past a Daisy Mart, where the milk comes in bags and the change in loonies. It couldn't be more Canadian if the main character went to Lester B. Pearson middle school, with a beaver on its logo. Which she does.
She is Meilin (Mei to her friends), voiced by Rosalie Chiang. A straight-a student, Mei has a huge crush on the convenience store clerk, and five more on the members of the oddly named 4*Town, a boy band not unlike another from the era with an asterisk in its name. She and her friends want nothing more than to attend their upcoming concert at Skydome.
But Mei has a problem, one shared by all the women in her family. At a certain age, a physical change takes place that leaves them emotional, hairy, smelly and unhappy with their bodies.
That's right; she turns into a big fluffy red panda. (Wait, what did you think I was talking about?)
Metaphors aside, Mei needs to figure out how to control this metamorphosis, which is often triggered by strong emotions. Or if that doesn't work, to use it as a money-making opportunity so she and her pals can see 4*Sync. I mean 4*Town.
Shi, who won an Oscar for her 2018 animated short Bao, has said she based elements of Turning Red on her own life — in 2002 she'd have been 12 years old, growing up in Toronto, with her own obsessions and a Tamagotchi just like the one Mei wears on her backpack. All of which lends a sense of lived-in reality to the story, carrying it through its more outrageous moments of fantasy and magic — and there are many, particularly in the final act.
What's more, the film represents Toronto's diverse makeup without seeming to try too hard.
There's a moment in the early going in which Mei is talking to one of her friends before hurrying off to catch a streetcar, which we notice has been briefly delayed while someone in a wheelchair boards. (This is a slight cheat, as the TTC wouldn't have fully accessible streetcars for another 12 years.)
None of this would matter if Turning Red wasn't any fun.
But the frantic pacing (Shi lists English filmmaker Edgar Wright among her influences) and blinkand-miss-it background humour makes it a joy to watch. I am still giggling at the memory of Mei's father, voiced by Orion Lee, using a moment of family distraction to snatch an extra Timbit from the dinner table.
And as kid-centric as the movie is, it's worth noting that Sandra Oh (another Canadian) excels in the role of Mei's well-meaning mother, explaining to her daughter the history behind their family trait, which began as a kind of defence mechanism.
“What was a blessing became ... an inconvenience,” she concludes, before stressing out lest Mei “panda all over the place.”
Turning Red joins an increasing pantheon of animated movies that manage to create tension and conflict without a clear-cut villain. (See Soul, Onward and the recent, Oscar-nominated Encanto.) Mei's biggest nemesis, other than an inability to find tickets for N*TOWN — wait, I mean 4*Town — is her own body. Teens of both sexes, or anyone who has ever been one, will understand.