A wild ride into adolescence
TURNING RED: UNPACKS MOM-DAUGHTER RELATIONSHIP
When Mei’s emotions get the better of her, she ‘poofs’ into a giant red panda.
Disney and Pixar’s allnew original feature film Turning Red introduces Meilin Lee, a confident, slightly dorky 13 year old with a solid group of friends, an admirable record in school and a better-than-average relationship with her family for the most part.
Meilin – Mei to her friends – has every reason to expect smooth sailing throughout the rest of her middle school career.
“I just love her dorky confidence,” says director Domee Shi. “I love her spunk and her spirit.”
But, Shi adds, like a lot of 13 year olds diving headfirst into adolescence, Mei is in for a wild ride.
“I really wanted to explore the conflicts of a young teen girl,” she says, “how she’s torn between being a good daughter and embracing her true messy self.”
The mother-daughter relationship takes centre stage in Turning Red, and it’s a theme close to the director’s heart.
Shi, who helmed Pixar’s 2018 Oscar-winning short Bao, says when asked why the little dumpling in the short was male, her response was “it would take a whole feature to unpack the mother-daughter relationship”.
“It was actually a big motivating factor in my pitch for Turning Red. It’s never black and white.
“At the beginning of the movie, Mei genuinely loves her relationship with her mom, but she’s being pulled in new directions – as everyone her age is.”
In Turning Red, this phase of growing up is marked in an unexpected, can’t-hide-from-it, larger-than-life way: when Mei’s emotions get the better of her, she “poofs” into a giant red panda.
“One minute, everything’s perfect,” says Shi. “And then, just like with all of us, all of a sudden there’s terror everywhere.
“She’s way taller, hungrier, more emotional. She’s, in fact, turned into a giant red panda, and the only way to turn back into a human girl is to take deep breaths, calm herself down and control her emotions. It’s kind of like The Incredible Hulk, but cuter.”
According to producer Lindsey Collins, Turning Red is set in Toronto, Canada, in the early 2000s.
“It’s not a magical world. That’s important because the
story itself is pretty fantastical ... yet we can all still relate,” says Collins.
“It’s a coming-of-age story about change and those transitional moments. It’s about that time in our lives when we’re trying to figure out who we are ... and a mother who struggles with letting go so her child can become who she needs to be.”
Turning Red introduces Pixar’s first-ever boy band, 4*Town.
“They represent that one band – that one song we all heard at her age that transformed us,” says Shi. “They’re Mei’s first crush, her first obsession. This passion for 4*Town is really her first dip into adolescence.”
Jordan Fisher, Finneas O’Connell, Topher Ngo, Grayson Villanueva and Josh Levi provide the voices of 4*Town, and Grammy-winning singer-songwriters Billie Eilish and her brother O’Connell penned the songs.