Sean Wang’s ‘Dìdi’ Takes It Back to 2008 for a Tender and Cutting Ode to Adolescence

Alci Rengifo

Chris Wang is 13 and little makes sense. There are frustrations hard to explain, and at times he can be bitingly cruel to his mom. Sean Wang’s “Dìdi,” a stirring semi-autobiographical film, turns Chris into one of the summer’s most memorable characters. As played by Izaac Wang, Chris inhabits a cinematic scrapbook of the best and worst of growing up. It’s a stirring portrayal of Taiwanese American life in the late aughts, with the universal power of memories. There is a particular sincerity to the way some millennial filmmakers are beginning to look back at their formative years, nostalgically recalling popular culture while almost nakedly standing before the audience.

The setting is Fremont, California in the summer of 2008. Chris lives in a suburban home with his Taiwanese mother, Chungsing (Joan Chen) and older sister, Vivian (Shirley Chen). There’s also Nai Nai (Zhang Li Hua), the seemingly sweet grandmother. Chungsing’s husband is never around because he’s away in Taiwan working at whatever earns them enough to afford this very nice house. It’s a time of transition. Vivian is about to leave for college at UC San Diego while Chris is gearing up for high school. Eager for validation, or fueled by curiosity and outsider rebellion, Chris stumbles into various forms of trying to shape an identity. Crushes prove daunting and friendships can suddenly get wobbly. When Chungsing tries to be open and approaching, Chris has a tendency to lash out.

“My first initial reaction to this script was that I wasn’t fully comfortable with the character. I didn’t fully like him,” Izaac Wang tells Entertainment Voice, “It’s not because the script was bad, but because he was difficult to play as my first dramatic and lead role and because he wasn’t completely like me. He was like a younger version of me who was like Chris, more vulnerable, emotional.” As written by Sean Wang, the film masterfully puts us in the sneakers of its lead. Like Bo Burnham’s “Eighth Grade,” Wang keenly evokes how what seems so microcosmic and meaningless when we are older feels like the end of the world at age 13. This is one of the first great coming-of-age films about that period when YouTube was barely three years old and felt like a free for all. Chris uploads videos of his best friend, Fahad (Raul Dial), pulling off risky pranks on the site, simultaneously chatting about a girl he likes, Madi (Mahaela Park). When he finally scores a date with her, YouTube might offer tips on a first kiss. But the resulting date turns into a brutally subtle lesson in failure and awkwardness. She watches a lot of movies he pretends to know about. When everything switches to the “are you nervous game,” some viewers might get PTSD from memories of similar, fleetingly embarrassing moments.

“Dìdi” (the title is a Mandarin term that means “little brother”) works like vignettes tied together by Chris’ frustrations. Puberty combined with social pressures gets volatile. He doesn’t know quite what interests him yet, in a culture that is strict about status. At a dinner he suffers through another kid being praised for his 4.0 GPA. Vivian slightly bullies him like so many older siblings, but it only fuels Chris’ drive towards bold antics. Suddenly, he may act out and sever a friendship, before trying to get close to local skaters who need a “filmer.” It’s clear that part of his sense of outsider status comes from being raised in an immigrant home. A girl tells him he’s “cute for an Asian,” and at McDonald’s, he is embarrassed by Chungsing eating her Big Mac elegantly with a knife and fork. Endearingly, she herself is an outsider for wanting to be a painter but giving it up to raise her family. In one of the film’s most piercing, best scenes, she shows Chris a painting she wants to enter into an art contest and he shrugs with clueless, adolescent aloofness. 

Such moments capture what is so special about Wang’s approach. Everyone feels real and not like some nostalgic trope. Chungsing clearly had her own dreams that she tries to somehow sustain. She loves her children but even that comes with its emotional scars. This is one of Joan Chen’s best performances in a long career of good ones. “I am an immigrant mother who raised two American children. So I relate to it and understand how this relationship is fraught with cultural chasms, misunderstandings and immense expectations,” Chen tells Entertainment Voice, “When I had my children in their teen years it was tumultuous, dramatic and sometimes painful as well as cheerful. I never had a chance to really reflect on it and express it. This film gave me that opportunity.” Chen also reveals that much of Chungsing’s dialogue was based on recordings Wang made of his own mother. There is indeed a documentary starkness to moments. Chris spies on an argument between Chungsing and Nai Nai, who harangues her daughter-in-law as a bad mother or weak wife. With Chris Nai Nai becomes the sweet grandmother, because such contradictions exist in traditionalist individuals.

“Dìdi” is full of millennial nostalgia in every corner, from MySpace profiles to posts where friends chat about going to see “The Dark Knight.” Wang never utilizes it simply for show but to demonstrate how the times connect to Chris’ plights. When he offers to be the videographer for some local skaters, they want to see his “clips,” so he rushes home to erase embarrassing YouTube content. On MySpace, he keeps track of his ranking in someone’s profile for self-assurance. There is a wonderfully honest moment where he wants to tell the truth in a chatbox, admitting his sense of embarrassment after ruining a group date with buddy Fahad. But he just can’t do it. The shame is instead channeled through other outbursts. Just when he feels accepted into a new group of friends, Chris makes one of those fatal mistakes spurned out of low self-esteem, not realizing how bad it makes him look. Few movies about adolescence cut this deep. There is no villain in this film, only the human experience of feeling out of place, when everyone else deceptively seems to have it so perfectly together. 

By not catering to stereotypes, “Dìdi” is an excellent drama about the Asian American experience but also one of the best recent films about that terrifying transition into teenage life. Who really had it easy in that department? Because Wang makes it so personal, it becomes a much more absorbing experience, like an immersive memoir. Of course, Chris eventually smokes pot, but the ensuing hallucination becomes a hilariously dark dive into his guilt, including a horrible prank involving a dead squirrel. Adolescence is memorable but rarely pretty. “With ‘Dìdi’ coming out, you feel the Asian American stories that are going to be told are more authentic, more genuine,” says Chen. “When I was in my 20s, 30s, there just weren’t enough Asian American screenwriters or directors. All their parents wanted them to get responsible jobs (laughs). But things have changed. Stories are more humanized and we’re stressing what’s common, common aspirations, the same love of family but fraught with fights. Now, we’re at a stage where we can be truthful to our humanity and not just portray ourselves making exotic tea or being tiger moms.”

“Dìdi” releases July 26 in select theaters and expands Aug. 16 in theaters nationwide.