‘Didi’: Review

Dir/scr: Sean Wang. USA. 2024. 94mins

Over the course of one hot summer in California, 2008, a 13-year-old Taiwanese-American boy undergoes a poignant coming-of-age. Drawing heavily from his own adolescence, director Sean Wang makes a beautifully-crafted feature debut, which manages to be both personal to his own specific cultural experience, and speak to more universal truths about walking that tricky path to adulthood.

Reframes the traditional coming-of-age narrative in its own honest, unsentimental terms

Wang previously paid homage to his family in his Oscar-nominated short Nai Nai & Wai Po, a love letter to his formidable grandmothers (one of whom, Chang Li Hua, stars here). Those family ties are at the heart of Didi (named after a Taiwanese term of affection bestowed on youngest bothers and sons), although it is more about testing the strength of those bonds. After a healthy festival run (including Special Jury Award and Audience Award wins at Sundance), the film releases in the UK on August 2 (it bowed Stateside on July 26, where it debuted at number 5 in the box office chart), where it should be buoyed by positive reviews and strong word of mouth. 

We first meet Chris Wang (Izaac Wang, no relation to the director) — known as Wang-Wang to his friends and Didi to his family — as he is filming himself running down the street in his Fresno neighbourhood, he and his friends having just exploded an elderly couple’s mailbox for fun. It’s a moment of sheer abandon, and it looks as though the summer ahead will be similarly carefree. But, instead, Didi will face shifting friendships, a flood of confusing hormones, courtesy of the slightly older Madi (Mahaela Park), and changes in his home life.

Sean Wang and production designer Hanrui Wang have nailed the early 2000’s aesthetic, a time in which the rise in online communication was further muddying the waters of human connection. Facebook, MySpace, texting on pre-smart phone devices, AOL Messenger, YouTube — all are well-used as on-screen tools for this young adult to inexpertly navigate this new phase of his life. A wannabe filmmaker (or ‘filmer’ in the local parlance), trying to impress an older group of skateboarders, Didi looks up how to film skating videos. Finding himself awkward around girls, he turns to YouTube for answers.

There is a great deal of humour here, ably handled by a cast of young newcomers. There is an ease to the interactions between Didi and his friends, including Fahad (Raul Dial) and  Soup (Aaron Chang), and Sean Wang’s screenplay makes the most of the performative bravado that exists between boys of this age — the ‘dudebro’ joshing and good-natured banter, often at each others’ expense but never explicitly cruel. There is also the unspoken idea that this group are united by their heritage; most are first generation immigrants, with a responsibility to make the most of the new opportunities their parents have given them.

That’s certainly the case for Didi, and his attempts to reconcile the expectations of his softly-spoken artist mother Chungsing (a wonderful Joan Chen) and acerbic traditionalist Nai Nai (Chang Li Hua) with working out exactly who he wants to be leads the film away from the normal teen movie template. While there are some familiar beats — Didi goes up against the school bully, gets stoned for the first time, sets his sights on a pretty girl — they are just layers of this far more complex film. More pressingly, Didi feels encumbered by his Taiwanese culture, describing himself as ‘half-Asian’ and swathing himself in oversize hoodies. He is unsure how to balance being both Asian and American, particularly in an environment in which, despite the diversity around him, his otherness is always obvious. “You’re cute, for an Asian,” says Madi.

With his father apparently away working in Taiwan — an additional burden for the put-upon Chungsing, particularly as it is used as an emotional weapon by the ever-critical Nai Nai — and his sister Vivian (Shirley Chen) about to leave for college, Didi cannot seem to find any comfort in his home life (some scenes of which were filmed in Sean Wang’s own childhood bedroom.) Despite Chungsing’s best efforts to connect with her son, he finds her Taiwanese ways an increasing annoyance, his familiar teen self-absorption leaving him blind to her own significant struggles and sacrifices (which make themselves known in one of the film’s stand-out scenes). Yet, despite his missteps, Didi is always sympathetic, with Izaac Wang’s charming, reserved performance at the heart of a film which reframes the traditional coming-of-age narrative in its own honest, unsentimental terms.