Movie Review: Turning Red as a symbol of Female Companionship
Mumbai: Turning red is the latest animated film from Disney Pixar and is currently streaming on Disney Plus Hotstar.
In the movie, Meilin (Rosalie Chiang) is a 13-year-old Canadian Chinese kid who hangs out with her pals Miriam (Ava Morse), Abby (Hyein Park), and Priya (Rosalie Chiang) in 2002 Toronto (Maitreyi Ramakrishnan). Meilin, in addition to excelling in school, assists her overprotective mother, Ming (Sandra Oh), in the family temple.
Meilin is startled to see that she has transformed into a massive red panda. When Meilin hides her panda self from her mother and father (Orion Lee), they mistake it for her first period. Ming informs her daughter about the family’s mysterious link to the red panda after she finds Meilin in her panda avatar after humiliating her at school.
All the ladies in the family were given the ability to morph by their family god. Just when Mei Lee’s body begins to develop its thought, her mother appears to lose hers. Ming (Sandra Oh), who is very protective of her daughter, follows her to school with armfuls of sanitary pads. And there is the charming animation’s softly subversive core: it’s that vanishingly uncommon thing — a work of pop culture that not only acknowledges menstruation but does it constructively.
The theme is one of female companionship, accepting change and hugging your inner panda, and overcoming mother-daughter conflict. The colour palette of the movie felt like a 90s anime movie, The transitions are extremely well-rendered sequences. It has a backstory explained as well as a representation of changes in puberty.
While turning Red is the ideal coming-of-age film, capturing everything of puberty’s uncertainty and emotion in the guise of a gigantic red panda, the action parts building up to the major concert/ritual are entertaining, and the voice cast is excellent. The message is on the right side of the subliminal, and the colours are vibrant and energetic.
It is the first Disney and Pixar picture with an all-female creative crew and a sole female director. Domee Shi had also done an Oscar-winning movie, Bao.
The film, written by Domee Shi and Julia Cho, produced by Lindsey Collins and Walt Disney Pictures and Pixar Animation Studios, and distributed by Walt Disney Studios, is available in English, Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, and Malayalam languages on Disney+ Hotstar.
(Sunidhi Bhatt)
