DÌDI (NETFLIX) (2024)

SYNOPSIS: Dìdi (弟弟) is written and directed by Academy Award-nominated filmmaker Sean Wang. The film is set in 2008 in the Bay Area, and is a funny, irreverent, and affecting ode to first-generation teenagers navigating the joy and chaos of adolescence as seen through the lens of a 13-year-old Taiwanese American boy, played by Izaac Wang (Good Boys, Disney’s Raya and the Last Dragon). At its premiere in competition at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival it received critical and audience acclaim, winning both the U.S. Dramatic Audience Award and the U.S. Dramatic Special Jury Award for Best Ensemble Cast.

MOVIE REVIEW:

“Dìdi” is an affectionate and commonly used word in a Chinese context. It means “younger brother” or someone who is much younger. It is also the title of director Sean Wang’s semi-autobiographical coming-of-age drama, which stars Izaac Wang (Good Boys) as the titular character and Joan Chen as his mother.

Set in the summer of 2008, Chris Wang (Izaac Wang), or known to his friends as Wang-Wang, is about to embark on high school. In the meantime, he hangs out with his buddies, Fahad (Raul Dial), Hardeep (Tarnvir Singh), and Soup (Aaron Chang) making silly YouTube videos and the like. He also has a crush on Madi (Maehala Park), which ends on an awkward note, and attempts to play it cool by volunteering as the videographer for a group of older skater boys.

At home, he frequently quarrels with his older sister, Vivian (Shirley Chen), who is about to leave for university. He feels that his mother is not giving him enough attention or care, and the only one he really gets along with is his Nai Nai, or grandmother (Chang Li Hua).

Dìdi, in short, is a formulaic story about an Asian American boy who struggles with his identity in a foreign country. Everything featured here feels lifted straight from an Asian family “textbook”: the underachieving sibling, the grandmother who worries that her only grandson is not getting enough nutrition, the mother who fears her son is falling behind her friends’ children academically—the list goes on.

Then there is the issue of being the “cool kid” on the block. Chris is so ashamed of being from a Chinese immigrant family that he lies about being half-white. There is also the embarrassment of navigating flirting while going through puberty. Again, the list goes on. There is, unfortunately, nothing in Dìdi that feels particularly fresh. Are we able to resonate with Chris? Absolutely. But overall, is Dìdi especially interesting or emotionally rewarding? Probably not.

Still, credit must be given to Sean Wang for bringing back memories of AOL Instant Messenger, the now-forgotten MySpace, and the early days of Facebook, the beginning of social media where users can fake their knowledge of the world without reading a book. A time when Chris can bluff to his crush that his favourite movie is A Walk to Remember when, in reality, he does not even know what genre it is.

There are parts of Dìdi that are certainly worth exploring, especially Chris’s mother, who suffers under the pressure of her own mother-in-law while dealing with loneliness and the burden of holding the family together as her husband works in Taiwan. The rest of this independent drama, however, just feels like déjà vu. One cannot help but feel that Sean Wang is merely scratching the surface of his immigrant experience. For now, it comes across as a nostalgic but somewhat shallow trip down memory lane.

MOVIE RATING:

Review by Linus Tee