Review: ‘Didi’ Remembers That Teen Angst Sucked (But Should Be Celebrated)
'Didi' (2024)
The coming-of-age movie has been a staple genre for filmmakers making their first feature for years. Whether it’s someone trying to survive their final year of Catholic school (Lady Bird), a child on a rare vacation with her loving and idealistic father (Aftersun), or a young man trying to find his place in a community embedded with gang violence (Boyz n the Hood), the genre has been a ripe and fertile ground for filmmakers to explore youthful memories with a new lens, hoping to understand some part of themselves in a way their younger selves never could.
This is the type of confessional cinema that Sean Wang brings to Didi.
Didi follows a Taiwanese American, Chris (Izaac Wang), who lives with his grandmother (Chang Li Hua, the director's grandmother and star of his Oscar-nominated short film, Nai Nai and Wài Pó), his mother Chungsing (Joan Chen), and his older sister Vivian (Shirley Chen) as he navigates friendship, romance, and the loneliness of gaining independence in the summer of 2008. His family calls him ‘Didi,’ the Mandarin term for “little brother.” His friends call him Wang Wang. When an older group of skaters ask Chris what his name is, he hesitates. He isn’t sure who he is.
Entering this new era of life, one that has put a lot of pressure on new teens thanks to sex-teen comedies like Superbad and rom-coms like A Walk to Remember, is awkward if you are not comfortable in your skin. Chris spends most of his time scrolling through the internet, AIM chatting with his few friends, and watching early viral videos on YouTube. Outside and away from the safety of a screen, Chris is quiet, reserved, and self-conscious about every word that slips out. He is an alien in the skin of a 13-year-old boy who tries desperately to fit in by fighting, skating, or drinking. Nothing quite makes sense, and it’s frustrating to be stuck over-analyzing every single aspect of your existence.
These are the basics of the coming-of-age genre, but Didi finds a way to stand apart with its brutal honesty.
Wang introduces these brutally honest moments with increasing intensity, starting with something as cutely nerdy as Chris wearing his sister’s shirt because it has his crush’s favorite band on it. His painful attempts to capture her attention are not all for naught, as he accidentally ends up in her room looking for the bathroom at a pre-teen birthday party. It is the beginning of an early romance that is spent AIM chatting and texting. Chris feels on top of the world on his first date, but that feeling is dashed by nerves and racism disguised as a backhanded compliment, shattering the self-confidence he spent weeks building in less than five minutes. His long walk home is a brutal punctuation mark to this shift in the story.
Wang uses this punctuation mark again in a climactic moment when Chris runs away after his emotions become too much to bear after his mom refuses to stand up for his actions. But the truth is plain to see: Chris wants to feel wanted. He wants to be chosen. It is a feeling every human has felt. Chris isn’t the only one feeling this throughout the film. Everyone is wearing a mask that often drops with the realization that they are the odd one out. No one wears this mask better than Chris’s mom, Chungsing.
Left to take care of her mother-in-law and two children while her unseen husband works overseas, Chungsing has created a life that she often dreams of growing out of. Through her artwork, which her children and competitions fail to recognize, and her attempts to keep up with the other mothers in the neighborhood, Chungsing struggles to meet the expectations set by others. She is a lonely woman who loves her children, who resent her for being “too Asian,” and laughs at her mother-in-law’s critiques of raising children who are “too American.” She has become a bridge across cultures, a role she never asked to bear but does so out of a deeper desire to see Chris and Vivian lead bigger and better lives.
When Chris comes to understand his mother’s role in his life, he takes a step outside of himself for seemingly the first time. It’s the first big self-discovery of his young life—a shift that cools the angst building to a boil under his skin. He realizes that his mom is a person who cares about him more than he probably cares about himself. For the first time, he realizes that his mother will love him unconditionally, a feeling he has been craving from others.
Independence is a tricky feeling to explore in a film. Wang tends to find the balance between loneliness and freedom in the way he frames Chris’s actions. Chris’s cruelest moments put him at the forefront of the camera, with the consequences of his actions taking place just out of frame, as if they are too painful to look at. Chris’s most isolated moments of self-reflection put the 13-year-old against the vastness of the world around him. The audience has to search for him on the screen.
But the awkwardness doesn’t always feel intentional. Wang, who is new to the world of feature filmmaking, is bound to make a few mistakes along the way. Even seasoned filmmakers create films with errors that don’t work for the story on screen. But Wang may have saved himself thanks to the genre he is working in. The coming-of-age genre offers extra cushion for directors to make mistakes that can add to the rawness of the film. Maybe it’s why it has been the go-to genre for many directorial debuts. Wang’s awkward moments come from sitting with moments for too long with Chris, pushing an emotion past its impact and into something that starts to feel inauthentic. Wang hints that he knows better by showing the reactions of side characters to Chris’s volatile state, like Vivian and her contemplative mother-henning towards her younger brother.
'Didi' (2024)
Didi makes something clear: this is an apology, not just to his mother, who is honored by Chen’s pensive performance and Wang’s poignant monologue near the end, but to a version of a younger Wang for the unrealistic expectations he placed on himself and others. It is a relatable feeling that has been explored time and time again, but it continues to feel fresh through the up-and-coming generation of storytellers.
Yet Didi is more than an apology; it is funny, angsty, and driven by a need to feel seen. But that’s why we make and watch movies, right?
