This review is part of our coverage of the 2024 Sundance Film Festival.
The Pitch: It’s the summer of 2008, a time characterized by Livestrong bracelets, Paramore Riot! posters, and the (low-key triggering) omnipresent background noise of AIM chatroom sound effects. Taiwanese-American Chris (Izaac Wang), who is known to his friends as Wang-Wang, fights with his older sister (Shirley Chen), is constantly embarrassed by his mother (Joan Chen), wants desperately to fit in with the cool older kids, and hopes to maybe even kiss a girl someday. In other words, he’s a teenage boy.
Catching Air: Sean Wang, the writer and director of Dìdi, is having what you could call an exceptionally good week. Not only is this movie (his feature debut) being warmly received at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, but his 2023 festival entry, a short film titled Nǎi Nai & Wài Pó (Grandma & Grandma), was just nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Short Film. It’s clear he’s a filmmaker who happily mines from his memories; in Dìdi, Chris’ grandmother is played by Wang’s own (Chang Li Hua), one of the real-life subjects of his Oscar-nominated short.
To drive the point home, our protagonist Chris enjoys skateboarding, but he really loves being behind the camera. “He’s going to thank me onstage at the Oscars one day,” his mother proudly remarks over dinner with a friend at one point. (The scenes in Chris’ bedroom were even shot in Wang’s childhood home.)
Friend Request: Wang makes the most of a finely-tuned 91-minute run time, immediately establishing our sense of time and place with how these teens are recording videos to leave on each other’s Facebook “walls” or rearranging their top friends on MySpace. Chris is a bit of a rebel — when we are first introduced to him, it’s in a moment of frenzied teen chaos. But Wang-Wang’s two best friends are generally bolder and a bit more charismatic than him; there’s Fahad (a hilarious and extremely comfortable onscreen presence in Raul Dial) and Jimmy (Aaron Chang), known to his friends as “Soup” because his house always smells like kimchi jiigae.
Like Bo Burnham’s Eighth Grade or Greta Gerwig’s Lady Bird, our protagonist is sometimes so awkward and painfully real that you either want to shrink into your seat or grab him by the shoulders and beg him to just say what he thinks. The way Chris constantly acts like someone he isn’t isn’t unique to his story — it’s the plight of our teenage years on full display, so utterly raw and natural in Wang’s directorial hands.
In Lady Bird, the titular character gets herself in trouble when she tells the cooler girl in school that she lives in a nicer home than she does; Chris feels the need to lie about his background and tell some new friends that he is half-white. The performance proves Izaak Wang is a total star — it’s a testament to the young actor’s abilities that we root for him through every misstep.
Mother Knows Best: It’s no surprise, but Joan Chen is so tender as Chris’ mother, Chungsing, and it’s the push and pull between them that emerges as the heart of the film. Chungsing is so sympathetic to the viewer in a way that could have only be written with decades of distance from the time of the events unfolding onscreen.
“Sometimes I dream,” she tells her son in one memorable scene, a statement so simple on the surface that feels utterly heartbreaking in the context of the film. Chris is not the first teenage boy to dismiss his immigrant mother as embarrassing, and he unfortunately won’t be the last, but the eventual resolution to Dìdi is the cinematic equivalent of a brief, shaky hug. It’s not final or perfect, but it’s a start.
In the Fabric: Shirley Chen is another standout as Chris’ older sister, Vivian, who is spending her last summer at home before beginning her freshman year at UC San Diego. Vivian and Chris are alternatingly vicious and tender with one another, butting heads, stealing clothing, and shouting things they later wish they could take back before trying to find common ground in the silence of a car ride.
Throughout Dìdi, it’s the attention to detail that underscores just how real everything feels. Vivian’s statement scarf/vest combo felt like a direct call-out to this writer, who also may have spent too much time watching TLC’s What Not to Wear or pouring over an issue of J-14. These teens spend their summer mini-golfing or trying to impress one another at pool parties (mark this as the second recent release, after Saltburn, that shows its subjects watching Superbad). There’s binges on early versions of YouTube and a moment with AIM’s first foray into AI, SmarterChild, that will dredge up l0ng-buried memories for many viewers.
The Verdict: Sean Wang, as both writer and director, has turned in an excellent entry into the “call your mother” cinematic canon. He doesn’t flinch from the darker or more troublesome aspects of the early teen years, but he ultimately balances them expertly by handling his messy protagonist with generosity and care. In a movie that’s all scraped knees and braces wires, it’s the love at its center that we feel the most by the time the credits roll.
Where to Watch: Didi premiered at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival.
