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The colorful coming-of-age story of an awkward teenager in California in 2008 is also a love letter to the principal’s mother.
By Alissa Wilkinson
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When a filmmaker makes a semi-autobiographical film that also tells the story of his childhood, very often it is about learning to see. In “The Fabelmans,” Steven Spielberg’s young replacement becomes obsessed with searching the world through the lens. of a camera, and the film functions almost as an excuse for a lifetime of placing the camera between him and the global. “Roma” recreates Alfonso Cuarón’s Mexico in the 1970s; “The Souvenir” recreates Joanna Hogg’s northern England in the 1980s; “The Cathedral” recreates Ricky D’Ambrose’s American suburb in the 1990s. In each case, we get a glimpse of the memories while the filmmakers don’t forget to see them, occasionally half-captured or framed in a way that is meaningful to The Point of View. mature of the protagonist.
What we realize, as we watch those movies, is that any considerate adult who combines their younger memories will see them from a new perspective, in a way that their younger selves never could. That’s what Sean Wang accomplishes with “Didi,” a film about a Taiwanese-American boy named Chris who spends the summer in Fremont, California, before starting high school. Chris (Izaac Wang, no relation to the director) lives with his grandmother (Chang Li Hua, the director’s grandmother), his mother Chungsing (Joan Chen), and his older sister Vivian (Shirley Chen, no relation to Joan), with whom he fights fiercely.
Like this summer’s “Janet Planet,” which recalls the excruciating nature of being bored and 11 in the summer, “Didi” leans heavily on the precise variety of aimless awkwardness that comes with being thirteen. It’s 2008, so Chris spends a lot of time snooping around YouTube, which at the time was full of random, amateur nonsense that went viral. He and his most productive friends, Fahad (Raul Dial) and a boy everyone calls “Soup” (Aaron Chang), make stupid pranks and film them, like blowing up an old lady’s mailbox. Chris has a MySpace account, but his friends are starting to migrate to the cleaner, more complicated Facebook. He is obsessed with skateboarding and filming skaters with his small camcorder. And it weighs heavily on Madi (Mahaela Park), who has a note in front of him.
Chris’s family circle calls him Didi, the Mandarin term for “little brother. “His friends call him Wang Wang. No knows who he is and hesitates before introducing himself to new people. In early adolescence, you’re stuck on that uncomfortable level where nothing makes sense, everyone is boring, and life is filled with an endless tug-of-war between immaturity and anything more adult. Chris and his friends use some crude slang to refer to sex, girls. , and anatomy, however, they are all virgins and know it; It is time to assume positions, to observe the characters according to their size, to discover who will be next.
Chris replaces Sean Wang, who built the film from his own memories. So while those memories are highly contextual and time-expressed (Chris uses all the acronyms for AOL Instant Messenger, chats with the SmarterChild chatbot, and checks a friend’s MySpace page to see if he’s still on his Top 8 list) ), appear universal. Also. When Chris misses a first kiss, we feel his shame. When he attacks his mother and his friends look at him negatively for his behavior, we feel his shame. “Didi” is as much about understanding how others see you as it is about learning to see them for who they really are.
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