Centered around the experience of a Chinese immigrant family, the short film Bao is an important glimpse into the life of a mother learning to let go. Like many shorts that air before Pixar feature-length films, Bao tells an important, familiar story through clever, unconventional ways. In this case, director Domee Shi felt it was important to use food as the driving metaphor behind the film’s message.
“In Chinese culture — and I think in a lot of cultures around the world — food and family just go hand in hand,” Shi told IGN during a recent junket for The Incredibles 2’s home video release. “My parents don’t say ‘I love you,’ they say ‘Oh, have you eaten yet?’, ‘Eat more,’ ‘You’re too thin,’ or ‘Oh no, you ate too much!’
According to Shi, portraying the child of the family as a sentient Bao was a necessary metaphor for its importance both personally and within Chinese culture.
“Food is just a way of communication for my family in particular, so I felt like a Bao and food was just a great metaphor to kind of play with the story about a parent learning to let go of her child, this family story,” Shi said. “My mom would always hold me close and be like, ‘Oh, I wish I could put you back in my stomach so I knew exactly where you were at all times!’ And I’d be like “Oh, mom…that’s creepy. But sweet. I love you.'”
With her directorial debut in Bao, Shi hopes to help people better understand their own families while getting a glimpse of the experience of a Chinese immigrant in the west.
“I don’t know what it’s like to be a mom, and it was just a really great opportunity to put myself in someone else’s shoes–in this character’s shoes–and kind of just learn more about my own mother and why she was this way to me growing up. And now, I understand her a little bit better,” said Shi. “Also, the whole act of making dumplings and making Bao is very family-oriented in Chinese culture. I remember so many weekends where my mom and I would just park ourselves in front of the TV, put on a movie, and we’d just be folding dumplings while watching TV and just talking, and that’s a very social thing that we do.”
Watch the video above for the full interview and to learn more about the approach to making the short.
For more on Incredibles 2, check out our chat with director Brad Bird, in which we learned about the one superpower the Parr family almost had and why Bird doesn’t want an Incredibles spin-off film. Also, read our Incredibles 2 review to see why we consider it a great sequel to the 2004 original film.
Cassidee is an editor and producer on IGN’s social team who always feels the impulse to call her mom when watching Bao. You can chat with her on Twitter.