Didi (2024)
Directed by: Sean Wang
Premise: Set in 2008, a Taiwanese-American teenager (Izaac Wang) copes with the challenges of growing up and struggles in his relationships with his family and friends.
What Works: Hollywood films tend to present an idealized version of childhood, imagining it as a carefree or magical time. This is nonsense. The teenage years are rife with anxiety and Didi taps into that anxiety with reality and intimacy. Chris is a thirteen-year-old boy struggling to find his place in the world and throughout this story Chris tries different activities and falls in and out of different social groups, fumbling his way toward a sense of self. Didi is shot in an intimate way using close ups and other tight image compositions, studying character’s faces as they react to hurt and disappointment. It’s produced in a very raw style. The actors have minimal makeup and scenes are often filmed with handheld camerawork and grungy, naturalistic lighting. It also incorporates social media circa 2008, recreating instant message programs, MySpace, and the early version of Facebook. The nuances of the screen activity conveys the character’s thoughts and the subtext of the scene. Didi has some terrific performances. Izaac Wang plays Chris and Wang reveals a lot through the physical aspects of his performance; there is a lot of complexity to this young character. The actor and the filmmakers allow Chris to be imperfect. He’s occasionally mean to his family and he is socially awkward in a specifically adolescent way. Also impressive is Joan Chen as his mother. Her husband lives and works in Taiwan so she is effectively a single parent and Chen’s character is bewildered by her children and mother-in-law. Like much of this film, Chen’s performance is a brutally honest portrait of motherhood, possessing a mix of awful and tender moments. That’s Didi’s outstanding quality. The film looks unsparingly on the teenage family experience in a way that reveals the complex humanity of its characters.
What Doesn’t: Much like Eighth Grade and Boyhood and other coming of age stories, Didi doesn’t have a decisive conclusion. Unlike some other teen-centered movies such as You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah or To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before, the ending of Didi is soft and somewhat ambiguous especially in Chris’ relationship with his friends. The ending is appropriate for this story; it is in keeping with the messiness of life and the possibility of the future. That quality distinguishes the movie but it may also make Didi a little less crowd pleasing.
Bottom Line: Didi eschews the polished and comfortable Hollywood fantasies of childhood for something much more honest. This is an exceptional coming-of age tale comparable to Eighth Grade and Boyhood in its style and insight.
Episode: #1010 (August 25, 2024)