Sometimes I think the best “coming of age” stories are the ones that open old wounds. The older we get, the harder it is to remember exactly what it was like to be young and inexperienced, stepping out into the world for the very first time. But an expertly crafted tale of adolescence reminds us just how painful life was when we knew nothing about it. We thought we were making it all up as we went along, that nobody ever felt the way we felt before and that nobody ever would again. Films like Sean Wang’s “Dìdi” remind us — to our relief and, often, embarrassment — that everyone else pretty much felt the same way.
“Dìdi” is Wang’s feature film debut, after his 2023 Oscar-nominated documentary short “Nǎi Nai & Wài Pó,” about the day-to-day life of his two grandmothers. Do yourself a favor and watch “Nǎi Nai & Wài Pó,” because you’ll almost certainly find yourself charmed, touched and probably cackling after the film’s final moments. It was clear then that Wang was sensitive to the micro-complexities of family foibles, the little moments that mean everything and the big moments that don’t matter for very long. “Dìdi” only offers more proof. This film marks the emergence of a potentially great dramatic filmmaker, and that makes sense. After all, this is a great film.
Izaac Wang (“Raya and the Last Dragon”) stars as Chris, a child just entering his teens, and a bit of a terror if we’re being perfectly honest. He steals from his sister and, when she makes the pretty solid point that he should stop doing that, he urinates in her lotion bottle. He blows up a mailbox, the culmination of an anecdote we only learn much later, which paints him in a very unflattering light. Wang’s screenplay is perfectly willing to write his protagonist as a proper heel.
But Wang also writes him as a sad little loner. And a fumbling amateur at pretty much everything. He loves his mom, Chungsing (Joan Chen). He hates his mom. He hates his sister Vivian (Shirley Chen, “15 Cameras”). He kinda realizes that he doesn’t hate his sister. He wants to film skateboarding videos. He has to look up how to film skateboarding videos after he agrees to make skateboarding videos. He’s trying to be everything because he feels like he’s good at nothing, and it backfires every time, only proving his point.
Wang’s film is extremely universal because it is extremely specific. The film takes place in 2008, when social media was just starting to become a default mode of communication, and kids were moving their lives onto the internet. Chris has a crush on a girl named Madi (Mahaela Park) and when she asks him what movie she should watch — on AOL Instant Messenger, which will make some of us feel very old — he skims her MySpace page for her favorite movies and randomly selects “A Walk to Remember.” She says she’s surprised he loves that movie, so he frantically Googles the title and realizes, gasp, it was a romance. His panic is truly funny because with that title what did he think it was? A buddy cop movie? A buddy cop movie about memorable walking?
Much of “Dìdi” revolves around Chris’ family. There’s a whole world at his dinner table and it’s got a whole continent missing. His father works overseas and never comes home. His paternal grandmother, his Nǎi Nai, is played by Wang’s real-life maternal grandmother, Chang Li Hua. Every “mistake” Chungsing makes while raising Chris is just the first domino, Nǎi Nai declares, on a path to Chris’ ruination and the total end of their family bloodline. There’s resentment brewing between the two matriarchs of his family. A little hatred and a little love, too. And also a deep-seated concern that neither of those kids are eating enough fruit to have proper, healthy bowel movements.
Casting a young actor for a complicated role is difficult. Casting a cavalcade is deeply impressive. Wang has an uncanny knack for getting smart performances out of young actors playing kids who make foolish choices. He lingers his camera just long enough on their dejected faces to prove that, whether they realize it now or later, they’re going to regret a lot of these decisions that they’re making, and that regret is probably going to last their whole lives.
Izaac Wang is a stellar young lead, completely confident in his lack of confidence, full of sympathetic rage and a desperate need to build connections with some people, even if it means breaking his connections with others. His best friend — for a while — is Fahad (Raul Dial), whose character is just mature enough to realize that Chris isn’t maturing at the exact same time, which culminates in one of the most awkward evenings of mini-golf on cinematic record.
Wang’s “Dìdi” is, in many ways, every other coming of age movie. Mistakes are made, tears are shed, understandings are reached, and yet we keep coming back to this material because some of it is bound to resonate with everybody. The more details a filmmaker like Wang can pack in — the cultural specificity, the unique markers of a flashpoint in time — the more connected we feel to everyone in it. It seems like we keep telling these types of tales to remind ourselves that, in the real world, these stories never stop being written. We may stop writing them ourselves as we get older, but everyone is young for a while, and everyone has a lot of growing up to do.
