Sharp coming-of-age Dìdi observes the teen transition from MySpace to Facebook

A gutshot coming-of-age story aimed directly at those former teenagers who weathered the great transition from MySpace to Facebook, writer/director Sean Wang’s Dìdi is—like so many backwards-looking films about youth—almost more painful than poignant. It’s not upsetting, nor is it overly invested in tricking tears out of us. It’s just so specifically observed that you’ll be hiding your head in your hands, ashamed that you were ever as foolish, cowardly, insolent, horny, and ridiculous as Chris (Izaac Wang) A.K.A. Wang Wang to his friends. Dìdi‘s summer dramedy tracks the hormonal leap between middle and high school for his pack of SoCal pals, bookended by the application and removal of Wang Wang’s braces.

Wang Wang’s home life—the Taiwanese American lives with his mom Chungsing (Joan Chen, wistful and playful as always), sister Vivian (Shirley Chen) and grandmother (Chang Li Hua)—drapes another layer of specificity over the lived-in script. Wang, who was nominated for an Oscar this past year for Nǎi Nai & Wài Pó, a short documentary about his own grandmothers, returns to an intimate household of close-up cameras and familial squabbles. The unit plays tug-of-war over the delicate line between archetypal and universal, defining its personal dynamics in broad structural strokes (Wang Wang’s school transition accompanies his sister’s preparation to head off to UCSD) and incidents you can’t help but anticipate. If a grandma character falls in a movie and you knew she would from the start, does it still make you worry?

That’s why Dìdi’s smaller barbs stick best. Bickering abounds, especially between Wang Wang and Vivian (who is more willing to fight fire with fire), until it’s time for the big emotional speeches attempting to make amends. Their mother offers a few chuckles thanks to Chen’s nuanced reactions and embrace of a mother’s superpowerful knack for embarrassing their kid. But nothing sweetens or stings deeply enough to hold up the tear-jerker moments, in which Giosue Greco’s score works overtime to remind us to feel melancholy. Though Chen can hold so much sadness in her face, and Izaac Wang is thoroughly convincing as an ungrateful little shit, the family’s moments together always seem like they’re treading water—an anxious teenager too eager to zip out of his parent’s minivan when getting dropped off at school.

These brief interludes attempt to build a deeper emotional core for Dìdi, but most of the film is more confidently spent in Wang Wang’s blended social world of screens and skaters, with a foundation already established by its period-appropriate signifiers: The aloof AIM conversations; the social politics of blocking a half-dated crush; the show-offy recitation of stand-up bits in front of girls, pretending like you came up with the anecdotes and punchlines. Wang’s filmmaking tears through this unflinching time capsule. But its energetic cuteness conceals a hateful underbelly, ready to be protected by its pubescent boys at the first sign of danger. When one of them screws up and gets defensive, he calls a girl a “stupid bitch.” The reactionary vitriol is acid on your face.

It burns because you know that’s how so many boys, little or otherwise, are. Wang’s keenest insights arise from focusing on the kids in their own world, making Dìdi a piece of cringe anthropology to accompany Eighth Grade. There’s even a pool party, albeit with a bit more casual racism. When wannabe video editor Wang Wang bumps into some cool older skaters, he reaches a nearly literal crossroads: Should he leave his old pals and childish ways behind for new horizons (and the newly invented YouTube)? The question isn’t that compelling, nor are the stakes behind Wang Wang’s potential summer fling with a girl he stalks on social media. But it still transports you. The narrative draws its power not from the characterizations, but from the exact year-month-day its setting exudes from every Paramore T-shirt and Motion City Soundtrack needledrop.

These specific multimedia memories, manifesting in cultural ephemera and paradigm-shifting technology, alternate between (and, at their best, blend) embarrassment and hilarity. It’s like putting your tween diary on the big screen, each passage broken up by slides of ancient social media posts. But the transcendent moments go beyond nostalgic, hair-graying recognition, and allow Dìdi’s characters to apply these artifacts to their own life. When Wang Wang feels more comfortable opening up to AIM’s chatbot than his friends or relatives, his timelessly stifled male emotions find reflections in the teeth-gritting tough-guys of the past and echoes in the ChatGPT-conversing incels currently paying for Twitter.

Voicing your own insecurities into the void can be far more honest and liberating than any conversation you’re able to have with a human…which becomes ironic in Dìdi, as the human elements that seem most capable of resonance stagnate, underdeveloped and predictable amid the period-accurate set dressing. It at first seems like this is because, at Wang Wang’s age, emotional distance is a right of passage; the best way to find yourself seems to be by pushing your family away. But as Wang’s story unfolds, and as Wang Wang’s relationship with the three generations of women in his family partially peels back his various insecurities, you can tell that Wang wants us to feel as close to this family as we do to his memories of this era.

Voicing your own insecurities into the void can be far more honest and liberating than any conversation you’re able to have with a human…which becomes ironic in Dìdi, as the human elements that seem most capable of resonance stagnate, underdeveloped and predictable amid the period-accurate set dressing. It at first seems like this is because, at Wang Wang’s age, emotional distance is a right of passage; the best way to find yourself seems to be by pushing your family away. But as Wang’s story unfolds, and as Wang Wang’s relationship with the three generations of women in his family partially peels back his various insecurities, you can tell that Wang wants us to feel as close to this family drama as we do to his memories of this era. But just as we may have a clearer recollection of the heart-pounding lead-up to a first kiss than all the small moments spent with our families—as bittersweet and silly as that seems in retrospect—Dìdi relies on its kid logic, and its kid priorities. Dìdi’s warm return to the late ’00s is an uncanny flashback for the right audience, but one that may leave you regretting your own pop culture-centric takeaways from the past.

Director: Sean Wang
Writer: Sean Wang
Starring: Izaac Wang, Joan Chen, Chang Li Hua, Raul Dial, Aaron Chang, Mahaela Park, Chiron Cilia Denk, Montay Boseman, Sunil Mukherjee Maurillo, Alaysia Simmons, Alysha Syed, Georgie August, Joan Chen
Release Date: July 26, 2024