The Song: China Girl

A song which was actually co-written with Iggy Pop in 1977, China Girl didn’t appear in a Bowie album until 1983’s Let’s Dance. It’s a pretty bold one actually: it explores a relationship between the narrator – Bowie, presumably – and his “little China Girl”.

As the song progresses Bowie gets more and more overbearing and possessive, and all passionate about swastikas and Nazis and the like.

Cripes. That’s a bit heavy for Hollywood.

So instead of that, why not distort the story into something unrecognisably trite and turn the eponymous China Girl into a girl made of china?! Yeah? Yeah.

The Movie:

A DisneyPixar production, the whole film is CGI, and 3-D, for extra punch.

Coco is a china doll who wants to be a human girl.

It's a plot that simultaneously thieves ideas from books, films and songs. It’s a winning formula. The studios know it. The audience knows it too, yet they’re having too much fun wearing the 3-D specs to feel cheated.

Adored by her owner, Adele, a young girl living in occupied war-time France, Coco’s dreams of real life mimic Adele’s desire for a ‘normal’ childhood outside of a war zone, which in turn mimics the country’s longing for freedom from occupation. It’s all very deep, like.

When the war ends, Coco goes missing and Adele’s family find an orphan girl, whom they adopt, and name Cosette (or Coco… see?). Adele and Cosette form an incredible friendship. 

It’s a war-time movie, but war is tamed-down, with bombs and planes heard and not seen – no bloodied limbs or horrific head injuries, nothing like that. It’s only a PG, after all.

The Cast:

Coco is voiced by an unknown actress, who will also voice Cosette in the final scenes.

She’ll inevitably go on to voice a couple more films, because she’s not really cute enough to get a role in a proper film.

Adele will be voiced by Dakota Fanning, and the audience will recognise her voice, but not be able to pinpoint exactly where they’ve heard it before, and it’ll bug them and bug them until the big revelatory moment at the end credits, where they’ll experience a devastating anticlimax.

Sample Dialogue:

Cosette: Am I real?
Adele: Yes! I hear your heart beating, loud as thunder!

(Sob.)

Next: Space Oddity