The outstanding new coming-of-age tale Dìdi is one that, at the outset, draws easy comparisons to other recent films in its subgenre like mid90s, Eighth Grade and several other titles in A24’s library. But the more time spent with writer-director Sean Wang’s directorial feature, the more it reveals its own unique notes of compassion and humor to distinguish itself from its ilk. It’s difficult to know how much this period piece will play for those who weren’t teenagers in the mid-aughts but since I was born in 1989, many of the cultural footholds from the era landed effortlessly for me. Folks in my generation don’t want to hear it but 2004 was 20 years ago, which has historically been the average nostalgia cycle for pop culture fixtures to come back around. If Dìdi is trying to pander to millennials, well, all I can say is that it does so as artfully and authentically as possible.
Our story takes place in the summer of 2008, centering around the 13-year-old Chris Wang (Izaac Wang) and his Taiwanese American family living in the suburbs of the Bay Area. His father continues to work in Taiwan so that his mother Chungsing (Joan Chen) and sister Vivian (Shirley Chen) can afford to live in America. Though he feels different from the majority of his schoolmates due to his ethnicity, he’s very much a “normal” teenage boy in many ways. He has close friends but finds himself drawn to hanging out with other groups. He’s interested in girls but doesn’t know how to talk to them. He loves his family but also feels embarrassed by them as well. All of these messy contradictions swirl around in a hormonal whirlwind as Chris’s first year of high school looms in the fall.
Also living in the Wang household is Nǎi Nai (Chang Li Hua), Chris’s grandma and Chungsing’s mother-in-law, a dynamic which echoes another account of Asian immigration to the United States from 2021’s Minari. Nǎi Nai is both naive to how actually modern teens pass their time — she doesn’t understand why Chris can’t “play with crickets by the creek” like when she was little — and critical of Chungsing’s parenting. It’s a perspective that gives Dìdi a more mature reprieve from Chris’s antics and depicts the hardships that other generations go through so that their kids can have it easier. Joan Chen is particularly excellent at conveying the balance of affection (the film’s title is taken from the pet name she has for her son) and distance mothers struggle to give their rambunctious teenage offspring.
Most of the events in Dìdi are seen through Chris’s eyes and like the best films about growing up, we’re brought back to times in our lives when we felt how our protagonist feels. The emotional ups and downs, where life either feels like it couldn’t be any better or couldn’t be any worse with hardly any room in the middle, are captured expertly by Sean Wang throughout. The joy of skateboarding with your friends, the embarrassment of saying the wrong thing to a crush, the bittersweet sentiment around seeing an older sibling going off to college; we feel it all with Chris. Films like Lady Bird and The Edge Of Seventeen have done a terrific job capturing the female side of this age and conversely, parts of Dìdi feel specific to how young boys interact. They blow things up, they call each other names and even get into the occasional dust-up.
While teenage boys being violent and vulgar isn’t a phenomenon specific to 2008, the movie does a terrific job capturing the details that pertain to this specific time and place. For instance, teenagers had moved on from MySpace to Facebook at that time but were still using AOL Instant Messenger to keep in touch since Facebook Messenger hadn’t been rolled out yet. YouTube was in its infancy and was still about regular people uploading what are essentially home movies as opposed to being the massive video platform that it’s since become. Text messaging was certainly around but still novel as a form of synchronous communication, where one numerical keypad typo sent to a pretty girl could send things into a tailspin. We come back to these movies, in part, to feel young again and with Dìdi, Sean Wang has crafted a small gem of teenage angst and splendor that will undoubtedly be treasured for years to come.
Score – 4.5/5
More new movies coming this weekend:
Coming to theaters is Alien: Romulus, a sci-fi sequel starring Cailee Spaeny and David Jonsson, involving a group of young space colonists who, while scavenging a derelict space station, come face to face with the most terrifying life form in space.
Streaming on Amazon Prime is Jackpot!, an action comedy starring Awkwafina and John Cena, is set in the near future where a “Grand Lottery” has been newly established in California where the “winner” can be killed for a multi-billion dollar prize.
Premiering on Netflix is Daughters, an award-winning documentary centering around four young girls who prepare for a special Daddy Daughter Dance with their incarcerated fathers as part of a unique fatherhood program in a Washington, D.C. jail.
Reprinted by permission of Whatzup