DÌDI

Directing: A-
Acting: A
Writing: A-
Cinematography: B+
Editing: B+

Here’s a compelling question for me to ask myself: if Dìdi were a movie with the exact same script, but the characters were all White, would I be as impressed by the film? The boy at the center of the story would have to have equivalent but slightly different means of diminishing himself in an attempt at impressing potential friends, but that would not be so big a challenge. And given how deeply impressed I was by the 2018 film Eighth Grade—my #1 movie that year—I am incline to say the answer to that question is yes, even though there is no way to say for certain. It must be said, however, that even though Dìdi is very much in the same vein as Eighth Grade (just more of a “boy version”) and less about the Asian-American experience than a very American reflection of it, the fact that it is about an Asian-American family is a big part of what sets this movie apart and makes it memorable.

It certainly doesn’t hurt that every single character is exceptionally well cast. One might wonder if the excellent star Izaac Wang, who plays the teenage title character, is related to writer-director Sean Wang, except that is merely a coincidence of a common last name (Izaac was born to a Chinese father and Laotian mother; Sean is of Taiwanese descent). Other cast members include Shirley Chen as Vivian, Dìdi’s older and antagonistic sister who is preparing to leave for college; Joan Chen as their mother, Chungsing; and a diverse array of friends Dìdi either struggles to make or struggles to keep.

A special mention must be made about these friends, as Dìdi is fundamentally about this, in a way just about anyone can relate to, either as someone in their mid-teens or someone who vividly remembers being that age: the anxieties, the insecurities, the random ways of acting out without necessarily even knowing why. A big part of this film’s greatness is the specificity of context to convey a pretty universal experience. But when it comes to the “bro-y” types of boys Dìdi hangs out with, this film absolutely nails the depictions: from his initial friends who are mostly of Asian or Middle Eastern heritage (played principally by Raul Dial and Aaron Change) to a later trio of slightly older skateboarders, notably non-Asian, he is eager to impress (Chiron Denk, Sunil Maurillo, and Montay Boseman). They all provide a lot of comic relief in their often teen-boy dopey antics, which also never feel any less than utterly real. This extends to many other kids in bit parts, a favorite moment of which is when a girl says after a friend has been introduced, “She’s a dumb bitch.” (This becomes a cleverly subtle callback later.)

Such is the case with every part of Dìdi, including the mother’s dreams of making her painting hobby into something more, all while struggling to mother her two children in the absence of their father, who we never see in the film as he is in Taiwan for work. The other family member we see in the house provides plenty of her own levity, Zhang Li Hua as “Nai Nai” (they pronounce it “nay-nay”), Chungsing’s mother-in-law and thus the household’s live-in Grandmother.

The trailer to and other marketing materials for Dìdi make it look a lot more chaotic than the surprisingly nuanced depiction of Dìdi’s family and social life it is, albeit with several chaotic flourishes. Dìdi, whose given name is Chris but whose initial friend group has nicknamed him “Wang-Wang” because his last name is Wang, is an early-years YouTuber (a couple of establishing shots indicate that the year is 2008), learning how to make cool videos, and this is what inspires him to offer his “filmer” services to the skater teens. A natural question, then, is whether this film is autobiographical, and reportedly Sean Wang drew from his life as inspiration, but did not directly base this story on it.

There is also a lot of visual depictions of ‘08-era social media websites, most notably both MySpace and Facebook (it’s easy to forget they actually co-existed for a short period), the camera following where we are meant to understand where his eyes are going—an unusually skilled manner of cinematography with social media representation in film. We also see a lot of AOL Instant Messenger chat exchanges, including with a girl on whom Dìdi is crushing hard, Madi (Mahaela Park). A couple of times, we see Dìdi type out a message that is honest and vulnerable—in once instance I found myself thinking: Send it, send it!—only to let insecurity get the better of him and delete it.

In any event, I left Dìdi feeling deeply impressed with it, and the more I think about it, the better the movie becomes in my memory. The stellar performances across the entire cast are both a reflection of actors with a startling awareness of the social nuances of other people their age, and of an assured director who has offered an astonishingly accomplished narrative feature film debut (he has done a couple of documentary features). Dìdi is a coming-of-age story of the very best kind: utterly specific yet utterly relatable.

Izaac Wang learns to play his instrument in real time.

Overall: A-