Summer 2024 was colored by a film that is the sequel to a Pixar feature I think we have all (or almost all) seen and loved: Inside Out (2015). The first film was a journey into Riley’s emotions, a happy little girl who nevertheless finds herself having to face a rupture: moving from Minnesota to San Francisco, with the resulting change of school and friendships, and the loss of her certainties… As we know, the film’s special feature is that the story unfolding on the outside is mirrored on the “inside,” that is, in Riley’s head: here there is a world animated by emotions. Thus we meet Joy, Disgust, Anger, Fear and Sadness, the emotion that always seems to need to be pushed away, but which turns out to be crucial for understanding and defining joy itself.
That film literally enchanted me, because representing the world of the mind and human emotions is extremely difficult, and that movie succeeds perfectly, uniquely portraying what happens to Riley, the collapse of her inner world and the reconstruction of a new reality that redefines her.
The usual sequel?
Relying on that experience, I went to see the film with a mixture of anticipation and, so to speak, preemptive disappointment, because I am not particularly fond of sequels, always fearing that the magic of the first film can hardly be repeated.
Instead, I am happy to have confirmed that I was wrong: Inside Out 2 does not disappoint; on the contrary… It takes us into the inner world of a now thirteen-year-old Riley, who therefore has to come to terms with adolescence. Those who have been through it (as well as those accompanying their own children on this journey) surely remember what that stage of life means: you are no longer a child, but you are not an adult either, and you live on a constant seesaw, wanting to prove that you are grown-up while secretly also wanting to remain a child, because the future is frightening, because the reality opening up before us seems, in some respects, indecipherable, and we are constantly searching for points of reference.
In this context, friendship is fundamental, as is accepting others, feeling understood and, above all, not excluded. Riley’s inner world therefore also changes and becomes more complex; new emotions arrive: Anxiety, Embarrassment, Ennui, Envy (and from time to time Nostalgia also begins to peek in, because at certain moments her gaze turns backward, to when she was a child and the world seemed incredibly simpler).
If Ennui’s purple, always lying on a little sofa and interacting with Riley’s mind using a remote control, certainly gives us an important nuance of adolescence, Anxiety steals the show: her bright orange tells us about Riley’s fear, her desire to control what happens, to the point of betraying what she believes in and the people closest to her.
Anxiety literally engulfs almost all the old emotions, which are consequently driven out of Riley’s mind, and only with great difficulty - and with the essential help of Embarrassment (very close to Sadness in the role it plays) - do they finally manage to make Anxiety understand that only by acting together in harmony will they be able to help Riley (we obviously will not reveal how) navigate the stormy sea of Adolescence.
As usual, Pixar gives us films that manage to be more than films, because they offer an opportunity to reflect, with a certain depth, on ourselves, on the teenagers we were, are or will be; on our children’s adolescence, if we have children… A film to watch and treasure!
An editor at Editrice Shalom
