If Pixar makes an artistic leap with Turning Red, it might be in the area of facial expressions. Or maybe it’s just that Mei—a spazzy, self-confident, 13-year-old girl (delightfully voiced by Rosalie Chiang) who is unwittingly on the brink of awkward adolescence—is one of the studio’s most expressive human characters. Either way, the variety of faces Mei pulls and the speed at which they change is astonishing. That’s perfect for a story that at first seems to be a metaphor for menstruation—Mei wakes up one morning to find she’s transformed into a giant red panda—but broadens to be more about learning to have a healthy relationship with one’s emotions, whether you’re experiencing puberty, as Mei is, or burdened by generations of familial repression, as Mei’s mother (Sandra Oh) is. Puberty? Menstruation? Repression? This is kids’ stuff? Well, yes, actually it is, so kudos to director Domee Shi, who wrote the screenplay with Julia Cho, for getting Pixar to make a movie about it. That’s not to say Turning Red is some sort of clinical, instructive, after-school special. Anyone who’s driven a car of preteen girls to the mall will appreciate the hilariously excitable chatter of Mei and her three close friends, especially when they’re commiserating over their love for the boy band 4*Town. (One of the girls imagines the band smells like “milk chocolate and wet rocks.”) A 4*Town concert is the setting for the film’s climax, a bravura nod to kaiju battles that is also somehow cuddly. Similarly, Turning Red is a wonder in the way 13-year-old girls can be: monstrous one moment, heart-melting the next.
(3/23/2022)
