FILM REVIEW
DIDI
Rated R
3 Minutes
Released August 16th
Didi premiered at Sundance 2024, where it received the US Dramatic Audience Award. This film is the major feature directorial debut of director/writer Sean Wang, who was previously a student in the Sundance Institute programs. Wang has been making films since 2016, when he was in his early 20’s. In 2023 he directed an acclaimed documentary on Lil Nas X. Didi is Wang’s intricate undertaking to piece together a tween/teen cinematic soliloquy on the angst of fitting in and make it flow in a dramatic storyline.
This movie succeeds in that flow and in a sense of realism. Our hero, “Chris Wang,” is played beautifully by Izaac Wang, who is already an accomplished actor at age 16. This hero makes mistakes, he rarely wins his battles, and he tries so hard, to the point of sinking into such a deep depression that it might make any of us hit the wall. But he perseveres, survives, and grows stronger from the experience, over and over again. That is, you may recall, the story of your own teen years.
Chris and his sister “Vivian” (Shirley Chen), play hilarious pranks on each other, and the mischief is realistically gross – my two brothers and I can vouch for that. Chris’s first time at an unsupervised teen party, trying to be cool while too enthusiastically sampling Jello shots, weed, and alcohol, is painfully realistic. The dream sequence that follows is almost, down to its minute details, similar to one I experienced in my late teens. I’m sure the director has been there done that. The story is set in 2008 and is smartly punctuated by visuals of email correspondence from that era on AOL, Myspace, and flip phones.
This movie really resonated with me because two of my best friends in high school were sisters in a wonderful Chinese family who had immigrated to Santa Monica from Taiwan. I spent a lot of time at their apartment. Their parents owned a Hand Laundry on Montana Avenue. They had many of the same struggles as the family in this film and overcame any hardship with hard work and a buoyant sense of humor. I remember one night having dinner with them, the whole family at the table, and my friends were trying to teach me Chinese words. I mispronounced one word so badly that their Granny, who usually never said a word, as she professed to know no English at all, burst into uncontrollable laughter so hard she almost had her head in her plate. I remember being so impressed with her uninhibited ability to just let the laughter out. So it is with the family in this story, as you are taken on this journey with them. The cinematography by Sam A. Davis moves with the characters so that you can get close to them.
Joan Chen is absolutely brilliant as Chris’s Mom. She is a wonderful actress whose career began in Taiwan, where she rose to stardom. She was then “discovered” by international directors Dino DeLaurentis and Bernardo Bertolucci. She moved to the US to break into the film business here and was a series regular on Twin Peaks (1989-1991). She made a career in film and TV in the US before taking time off to raise a family.
There is a skateboard sequence in the movie that is skillfully cast and shot. Director Wang recruited actual talented skateboarders who had never acted before and pulled superb performances from them. Note that shooting and editing skateboarding has a high degree of difficulty, and here it is done very well.
Although there is a bit in the middle of the film that loses momentum, Didi is overall a touching and authentic story of growing up Asian in a society where most of your friends are not Asian. It takes a great deal of love and a huge family bond to survive and thrive when you have so many hurdles to vault.
Kathryn Whitney Boole has spent most of her life in the entertainment industry, which has been the backdrop for remarkable adventures with extraordinary people. She is a Talent Manager with Studio Talent Group in Santa Monica. kboole@gmail.com
