Director Sean Wang’s Didi is a rare coming-of-age film about a nerdy teenager; it isn’t an ugly duckling story where the hero will emerge as a successful and ladies’ man—the ending is more realistic. Sean Wang, who directed the Oscar-nominated documentary short Nǎi Nai & Wài Pó, is making his feature directorial debut, and Didi, which won awards at Sundance, is clearly autobiographical to some degree.
The protagonist is 13-year-old Chris Wang, whose family calls him “Didi,” while friends call him “Wang-Wang.” (He’s played by Izaac Wang from Good Boys; the director, star, and character all share the same surname.) Living in the Bay Area suburb of Fremont, Chris is marking the summer between 8th and 9th grades. He lives with his mother (Twin Peaks’ Joan Chen), his college-bound sister (Shirley Chen), and his grandmother (Chang Li Hua), as his father is back in Taiwan earning money to send home.
Chris navigates the usual adolescent stuff, including a crush on a cute girl (Mahaela Park), fights with his mom and sister, and an ever-evolving group of friends. At one point, he becomes the “filmer” for a group of skaters; when we think he’s going to find his calling in filmmaking—as the real Wang did—he turns out not great at framing or composing a shot, at least as a 13-year-old novice.
The Chris character reminded me of the geek contingent on the TV show Freaks and Geeks in that he’s believable as a nerdy kid who falls into the spiral of being nervous all the time, making inexplicable social mistakes, beating himself up over them, and beginning the cycle again.
The movie is very attuned to the internet and other technology circa 2008. There’s a lot of AOL Instant Messenger, early YouTube, Motorola RAZR cell phones, and the transition between MySpace and Facebook. I’m unsure if any movies from that era captured the specific horror of having a friend drop one from their “Top 8” on MySpace, but this one does. Chris’ career as a fledgling filmmaker and YouTuber would presumably get a lot easier the following year with the arrival of the first iPhone with a video camera.
Ultimately, the film is more about the family than anything else. Joan Chen turns in a knockout performance as a frustrated painter mom who, like her son, faces pressures from multiple directions. Didi is meant, at times, to look like it was shot on a vintage camcorder, although this leads to some ugly shots. The film includes my least favorite movie scene, when a character gets stoned and hallucinates for a few minutes. Also, it’s supposed to be the summer and fall of 2008, but there’s no mention of the economic collapse or Barack Obama.