Pixar’s first Canadian animated film set in Toronto!
By: Mariana Schuetze
Turning Red’s title card.
Pixar’s newest animated film might be one of its best yet. Directed by Canadian filmmaker Domee Shi, Turning Red brings its viewers into an animated version of Toronto and into the life of an Asian Canadian teen, Mei Lee, living in the city.
Turning Red is the coming-of-age story of Mei, a humourous, captivating, and fun 13-year-old girl. From the beginning of the movie, she is incredibly confident and even says things like: “I wear what I want and say what I want,” as she narrates her day-to-day life while getting on the TTC.
At its core, this movie is about growing up and learning to embrace yourself, which Mei goes through as she has to face her “magical puberty,” which turns her into a red panda whenever she gets too emotional. While being a giant panda sounds like a lot of fun, it certainly brings some turbulence into Mei’s life as she has to learn how to manage her relationship with her mom and friends — all while growing up.
The film is also the first time Toronto has been animated in a Disney/Pixar motion picture, the first Pixar film to be solely directed by a woman, and only the second to have an Asian lead (after Up, 2009) out of the studio’s now 25 feature films.
Shi pitched this film to Pixar in 2017 after making the Academy Award winning short film, Bao. Soon, the film was in production, eventually being released on March 11 exclusively on Disney+.
Besides the movie being directed by a Canadian, its main cast of voice actors is also made up of a bunch of Canadians! Canadian Emmy Award nominee Sandra Oh lends her voice to Mei’s mother, Ming Lee. Mississauga, Ont.-born actress Maitreyi Ramakrishnan, best known for her role in Never Have I Ever, plays one of Mei's best friends, Priya Mangal. Hyein Park, Korean Canadian story artist at Pixar, voices another one of Mei's best friends, Abby Park. Another of Mei's best friends is Miriam, played by American actress Ava Morse. And finally, 13-year-old Asian American Rosalie Chiang is the star of the film, playing the lead role — for the first time in her career — of Meilin "Mei" Lee.
Turning Red is set in the early 2000s in Toronto, and it ends up being really nostalgic. Not only in the fashion of the characters and their use of Tamagotchis, but also in Mei and her friends’ obsession with an adorable boy band. For this film, Shi and producer Lindsey Collins reached out to artists Billie Eilish and FINNEAS to help them work out the music for the band. Together, they created the songs 4*Town sings in the movie, and FINNEAS also lends his voice to one of its members.
It is honestly so fun to see Toronto portrayed like this in an animated movie. When were you expecting to see the CN Tower in all its glory in the background of a cute Pixar film? I certainly wasn’t expecting it to happen so soon.
To make Turning Red, Shi was inspired by her own experiences growing up in Toronto in a Chinese Canadian family. Specifically for Shi, this movie is about her own relationship with her mother. In an interview with Vanity Fair, the director talked about how much of what Ming does in the film and her relationship with her daughter Mei came from her own life. “Yes. My mom definitely did follow me on my first day of middle school,” she told Vanity Fair when asked about which “crazy moments” in the film were based in real life.
Besides looking at her own life in Toronto to create the plot of this movie, Shi was also inspired by her admiration of anime to develop the animation style of Turning Red. Because of that, Shi was faced with translating a 2D-style animation into a 3D one. In an interview with IndieWire, Shi talked about her challenges on the animation front. “We were never going to replicate 2D exactly in 3D,” said Shi. “But how do we use these powerful tools that we have today to stylize the look of the movie in 3D space?" she added.
To achieve the final looks of Turning Red, Shi and her all-women-led team of producers, cinematographers and animators studied the language of anime and worked out how they could bring that to a Pixar film. In the end, the movie turned out to be quite colourful and highly detailed, which clearly reflects their inspiration for anime and certainly makes the film even more enjoyable to watch.
I really enjoyed how women-centred this film is and how it highlights all the meaningful female relationships in Mei’s life. Mei is a strong, confident and brave young woman who not only relies on but is supported by a bunch of equally impressive women in her life, such as her mom and her friends. The way Turning Red explores those relationships and what they mean to Mei (and consequently, to any young woman watching) by making them the centre of the story, is incredibly refreshing to see on screen. Especially when we are used to seeing so many stories with barely any women in focus.
And what makes Turning Red even more groundbreaking and inspiring is that it is a Pixar film with a 13-year-old Asian girl as a protagonist. How often do we get to see assertive young Asian women like this on screen? It certainly made me feel like I could do anything.
With Mei, Turning Red takes us right into middle school and, consequently, talks about all the end-of-the-world problems that come with being a 13-year-old. She experiences that feeling of embarrassment and hopelessness you have when you are younger and thinks that every single little thing is the worst thing that’s ever happened to you. Like many of us, Mei goes through changes in her body and life. Her parents, like Shi’s and probably yours too, don’t understand that she’s growing up and has different hobbies, tastes and ideas. In the film, Mei goes through all of that, of course, in her own way. Turning Red becomes incredibly relatable by being highly personal in narrating these experiences.
This is what director Domee Shi wanted to accomplish with this film. “Turning Red’ was inspired by this universal struggle of growing up and figuring out how to handle honouring your parents and staying true to yourself. And, for Mei Lee, the red panda is that magical spark that sets off this internal conflict within herself,” she told IndieWire.
As a 21-year-old Latin-American woman, watching Turning Red and following the story of this incredibly relatable 13-year-old Asian Canadian girl was a fantastic experience. I come out of this film feeling stronger and unstoppable, and I believe many of you might feel the same way after watching this.
In telling the particular story of a 13-year-old Asian girl who can turn into a giant red panda, Turning Red makes us laugh, cry, smile, sing, think way too hard about our lives, and feel better about ourselves. Like many of us, Mei believes she has her life figured out, but what she finds out throughout the film and what we learn in life is that she does not. Yet, she embraces her mess and becomes a better version of herself — a lesson hopefully we can all learn from watching Turning Red.
Rating: 5/5 Stars