Dìdi: Filmmaker’s Delightful Coming-of-Age Story an Homage to Mothers, Family, and Art

By Liz Braun

Rating: A

It’s the summer of 2008 in Fremont, California, and for 13-year-old Chris and his friends, high school is shimmering on the horizon.

Chris (Izaac Wang) is a quiet kid, caught in that place between childhood and the beginning of adult life: the no-man’s land of adolescence. Known affectionately as “Dìdi” to his family, Chris lives with his mother (Joan Chen), who is an artist, his older sister Vivian (Shirley Chen), who is on her way to college, and his difficult grandmother (Zhang Li Hua).

His father, mentioned but never seen, is away working in Taiwan.

Chris has a crush on Madi (Mahaela Park), a girl from school, but he doesn’t really know how to interact with girls. He hangs out with a few friends, goes online a lot, makes YouTube videos and generally attempts to negotiate the more confusing and alienating elements of teenage life. He fights endlessly with his sister and is embarrassed by his mother.

Add to the usual hellscape of adolescence the fact that Asian-American Chris straddles two cultures; offhand racist comments and microaggressions are a daily reality in the super-cool skater-dude world of Fremont.

But things change. Chris falls in with some older skaters by exaggerating his filmmaking skills and starts making videos of their skate-boarding exploits. A few things stand out about his interactions with the older crew — for all their faults, these guys are kinder than his friend group, and they show respect for the paintings done by Chris’ mother. At the same time, Chris learns some hard truths about adult life — the animosity between his mother and his grandmother, for example.

Eventually he begins to understand what his mother’s unconditional love for him and his sister is all about.

Dìdi is a semi-autobiographical story from writer-director Sean Wang, so it’s fair to assume that the storytelling reflects his own adolescent experiences. What’s on view here is — not to be overdramatic about it — the birth of an artist, the transformative time, and influences that helped mould a creative spirit.

The filmmaker has meticulously recreated the era in every element of dress, music, setting and activity, right down to Chris’ online world, which still involves MySpace and a somewhat amateurish YouTube.

What holds it all together is a superbly understated performance from Wang, who is fully three-dimensional as Chris — a decent kid trying to figure it all out. Absent here are all the usual cinema cliches and exaggerations about teen life, thank the goddess.

Dìdi begins with the noise and chaos of a stupid childhood prank and ends with an expression of mature awareness and gratitude. Along the way is a funny, endearing, sometimes cringey and very engaging journey.

Dìdi. Written and directed by Sean Wang. Starring Izaac Wang, Joan Chen, Shirley Chen, Zhang Li Hua. In theatres August 2.