In Sean Wang’s feature debut Dìdi, Chris Wang (Izaac Wang) goes by many names. His friends, a collection of fellow gangly thirteen year olds with a shared sense of “your mom is gay” humor, call him “Wang-Wang”. In his multigenerational household, his grandmother, mom, and big sister call him “Dìdi” , or “younger brother” in Mandarin. When he introduces himself to older, cooler kids, he tries going by Chris. Chris’ many alibis are evidence of his not yet being a solidified person. In the summer between eighth grade and high school, Chris’ identity, like so many others of his age, is an adolescent Jell-O. He is guided solely by self-consciousness, often swept along not by any real value system, but by the swift, ever-changing, and unforgiving social and emotional tides of early adolescence.
In the summer of 2008, Chris’ time is divided between a relatively active social life of mini-golf and AOL messaging cute girls and a family life centered upon a seemingly biologically predetermined adolescently fraught relationship with his mother, Chungsing (Joan Chen). Chungsing is a pseudo-single mother who is undeniably loving, but is also prone to outbursts as well as often inadvertently embarrassing Chris. Izaac Wang adeptly plays two dissonant versions of Chris, as he switches majorly between adolescent-at-home versus adolescent-with-friends. Chris is the quieter friend in his group, likely to mitigate the risk of saying something dumb, but often bratty, loud, and immature in the safety of his home, bickering at the table and pissing in his sister’s lotion bottle when she aggravates him.
Didi doesn’t soften the blows of early adolescence in the way many coming-of-age stories tend to. Most notable is the consideration of Chris’ race as an additional and major aspect of his adolescent alienation. His crush, brutally and completely unaware of her immense racism, shyly compliments him on being cute “for an Asian”, and the cool, older skaters he offers to shoot clips for dub him “Asian Chris” without a thought.
Despite Chris’ endless self-monitoring and self-censoring attempts to read as “normal” amongst his peers, he constantly embarrasses himself, fumbles social opportunities, and makes decisions that hurt his family, himself, and others. Chris alienates himself from his friends by telling the wrong story in front of new friends, fumbles romantic interactions by admitting nervousness, and isn’t all that good at videography, which he claims is his main passion and hobby.
Dìdi’s exploration of the constant tween dread of being perceived is churned through a second layer of mediation in the form of the early social digital landscape. Chris has almost as many interactions through the keypad of his flip phone and his AOL account as he does in person. Wang incorporates this digital space with accuracy and visual finesse, reflecting upon our era of constant digital surveillance from a slight temporal distance. It’s partially endearing as a time capsule, perhaps, but the film purposefully drains most chances to sit in the warm glow of mid-aughts digital nostalgia, instead constantly mirroring back our most cringe-inducing teen memories in full force. One feels mainly an uncomfortable empathetic ache as Chris painstakingly types and retypes messages to the girl he has a crush on, or wipes his YouTube pranks when there’s a risk of someone cool seeing them. He digitally self-surveills in hopes of appearing average and sociable, but it’s often to no avail. The digital mediums may be different for us now, but the practices are the same.
Comparisons between Wang’s Dìdi and Bo Burnham’s Eighth Grade have already been made. But what makes Dìdi particularly enthralling, to me, is its lack of sudden, beautiful catharsis that so many coming-of-age stories (Eighth Grade included) have offered before. Just when another embarrassing or disappointing thing couldn’t possibly happen to Chris, it does. Just when it feels like Chris must have learned his lesson by now and will do the right thing, he doesn’t. Dìdi isn’t hopeless, but the path to salvation and self-actualization is admittedly still in the distance for Chris and his friends. Dìdi doesn’t feel cynical, though. Chris’ endless attempts and failures feel like a space for forgiveness. He’ll figure it all out sometime, but it would be crazy to think he’s going to figure it out right now. Didi feels not just loving toward its protagonist, but radically accepting of his tendency to screw up again and again and again without learning. The goal is not self-actualization at thirteen, it’s surviving.
Dìdi isn’t hopeless, nor is it cruel. It is, however, a little mean, a little embarrassing, and a little depressing. This is all the highest compliment, in the sense that Dìdi feels refreshingly honest. It’s a coming-of-age film that’s okay with being a middle schooler, nothing more and nothing less.
