Sean Wang’s “Dìdi”
Dìdi (2024) - Sean Wang, United States
“… it’s the kind of story I wish I had growing up…”
★★★★½
Sean Wang’s semi-autobiographical story of a first generation Asian American teen in 2008 is a story that I think a lot will relate to in terms of finding one’s true voice and teen angst though I wonder how audiences beyond Asian communities will react to the central character. Young Cris Wang (played by Izaac Wang) is nicknamed Didi and lives with his mother, sister, paternal grandmother and absent father in Fremont, California. It’s the summer between his transition from middle to high school and Didi is eager to escape not only his child identity but also that of Taiwanese ancestry; he even presents himself as half-white to new friends.
It’s important to understand how the cultural norms of people pleasing and presenting to impress frustrate Didi but what he fails to recognise is that his mother(played brilliantly by Joan Chen) is also rebelling against these cultural expectations as she aspires to pursue her passion of painting. I grew up in a Korean household and the experience of watching this film was at once recognisable and painful; being overwhelmed and capitulating to white dominated society to fit in and masking cultural strengths without realising their positives.
Thus, Didi is not an altogether sympathetic character and his shallow pursuit of acceptance is often misguided and well represented by the primitive beginnings of social media shown in the film. Advertising oneself on MySpace, YouTube, and AOL was in its raw infancy and though what we see is a boiled down version of what we have now, the underlying problems still remain and are still relevant though, perhaps easier to read in its stripped down 2008 form.
Sean Wang’s script isn’t without humour and he sparingly makes use of fantasy imagery which succeeds in enhancing rather than distracting. The humour offers respite from some of the more agonising moments of self-inflicted humiliation.
The film steers clear of sentimentality though the chaos of teenhood in all its messy glory may put off those more accustomed to more homogenised representations. Overall, it’s the kind of story I wish I had growing up though it has universal themes of self discovery, self acceptance and growth . It makes for a great multicultural, self-discovery double feature with Moin Hussain’s recently released Sky Peals, another feature length debut. Sean Wang is off to a strong start and I’m looking forward to seeing where he goes next.
