Dìdi: a landmark millennial fable
2008 was sixteen years ago. If you were born in that year, you can now legally drive a car, which means that Gen Z, Gen Alpha, and whoever is next are going through their formative years right now. Like it or not (and you probably don’t), a film about life in 2008 is now considered a period piece, which is when Sean Wang’s directorial feature debut Dìdi takes place. It feels like it’s taken forever for boomers and Gen X-ers to loosen their cultural grip on cinema, but in Dìdi, the millennial Asian American voice has arrived in all its awkward, cringeworthy Recession-core glory.
Dìdi is a coming-of-age tale about Chris Wang (Izaac Wang), a thirteen year old Taiwanese American boy trying to survive the particular social hell of summer before high school in the suburbs of Fremont, California. Our introduction to Chris involves an exploding mailbox, communicating his sense of humor and how far he’s willing to go to impress others.
At home, Chris is referred to as dìdi, or “little brother” in English. He’s the youngest and only boy in the family. He is also soon to be the only child in the household with the college-bound departure of Vivian (Shirley Chen), his infuriating older sister. His mother, Chungsing (Joan Chen) has a light grip on the household, doing everything she can to keep the peace while under constant scrutiny from her aging mother-in-law Nai Nai (Zhang Li Hua).
Chris is emotionally cornered by all his family members. Whether it’s his sister’s incessant infantilization of him, his mother’s passive model minority expectations, or his grandmother’s deteriorating state, home life becomes unsettling and volatile. But like any rebellious suburban kid, Chris’ social life becomes far more important.
To his friends, Chris is “Wang Wang,” someone willing to go along with most anything and believe the suburban myths foisted upon him by a group of friends he’s gradually growing more different from. His encyclopedia to the world comes from YouTube and AOL Instant Messenger. On top of that, there’s a girl who wants to hang out with him alone, and he’s freaking out. With a camera in hand, Chris wants to be a “filmer,” but how? Maybe start with some pranks, recordings of Nai Nai, and partnering with the high school skateboarding hooligans at the strip mall.
The most remarkable thing about Dìdi is its ability to be emotionally honest about this time in history as a pre-pubescent Asian American boy. Chris’ long stares, pauses, and buffering only to fumble out a hackneyed half truth of an answer are familiar to me and other people’s bicultural realities of fitting in. Depending on the scenario, Chris’ energy will turn on a dime, a survival skill in reading the new social worlds he occupies. What is liking someone supposed to feel like? What does setting boundaries mean to the only friends one has? These questions foam up and some of these are still insecurities we have inherited as adults.
Director Sean Wang has a keen awareness of mixing truths, worlds, and languages while grounding them in a greater sentimental purpose. Fremont plays out as every suburb of America, including the playground teens become too big to exist in, to the chunky computers we watched the original memes emerge from. Chris’ only chance at surviving the intensity of inevitable change is knowing who he is, something not one person in his life can tell him. He needs these challenges, but it’s heartbreaking as a viewer to relive these conflicts that weren’t always settled so neatly in our own lives.
The film is well balanced in its humor and its tenderness. The biggest laughs aren’t only from the “remember this?” references many millennials are sure to harken back to, but from the chest-out performance of Izaac Wang as Chris who makes no bones about cracking his voice for the entire film’s runtime. Joan Chen’s understated and completely magnetic turn as Chungsing Wang will make everyone cry but will make the right people break down completely.
There are a couple comparisons I draw from Dìdi, including Bo Burnham’s Eighth Grade, Jonah Hill’s Mid90s, and Bing Liu’s Minding the Gap. While I wouldn’t call the film original, it measures up to the magnitude of these more recent coming-of-age stories. I would say it is arguably more focused than all of them depending on the day.
Perhaps the main thing to say about Dìdi is what we collectively feel when we watch our old YouTube videos, when we finally call our mom from another city, when we see photos of that person’s wedding, and what another all-American rascal once said: “life moves pretty fast.”
Rating: 4.5 / 5
Dìdi releases in theaters July 26, 2024.
This film was reviewed as part of our 2024 SXSW coverage. Click here for more articles from the festival.
