Sean Wang’s Taiwanese American slices of life

Awkward, tender, and brimming with adolescent energy, Dìdi is immediately enrapturing, from its introduction through the lens of Chris’s homemade prank videos, to the try-hard façades he and his friend group put on, in the hopes of impressing girls. It’s the rare film that captures the simultaneously sincerity and embarrassment of trying to find oneself and establish an identity as a young teenage boy. For Chris, this idea is already in flux; he’s “Dìdi” at home (especially to his grandma) but “Wang Wang” to his classmates, a split cultural identity he’s been dealing with all his life, to the point that it no longer feels like a big deal. His sense of un-belonging certainly bothers him, and it even comes up in dialogue on occasion, but Dìdi avoids the pitfalls of many youth-oriented Asian American stories dealing with culture clash by nestling these concerns within a more broadly relatable story of hormonal teen-hood. The film is Taiwanese American in its bones, but without making broad pronouncements about itself by verbalizing some easily digestible message of self-acceptance.

Dìdi, it turns out, is much more challenging than that; it’s a story in which its young protagonist’s cultural troubles aren’t a defector badge of honor, but rather, a motivating factor in every ugly and beautiful thing he does and says. From crushes, to poorly thought out jokes that backfire, to the desperate need to impress the older kids in his neighborhood, Chris’s experiences run the emotional gamut and feel so true to life that they become occasionally hard to watch. Izaac Wang, who leads a fast-talking teenage ensemble, is a firecracker in the role, and he brings thoughtful silences to Chris’s frequent moments of rejection and self-loathing, which eventually manifest as troubles at home.

As vivid as the movie may be in its depiction of late-aughts details—seeing young characters fall out of each other’s “Top Friends” lists on their social media profiles has never cut so deep!—just as vivid is Chris’s household dynamic, between his mother’s deep concern for his academia (and her own community reputation), and his grandmother’s doting, coddling nature, and ways in which these two women continually clash. And yet, Sean Wang films both women in ways that make them beautiful. Not just physically, but soulfully radiant. Chris may not fully see the ways in which they love him, but years later, Wang’s camera returns that love to them sevenfold.

Few teen movies have so deftly managed to paint broad domestic stereotypes before digging deep into their complex humanity, and even fewer have so accurately reflected the feeling of fucking up as a teenager while trying to impress one’s peers. The emotional fallout of these dueling predicaments manifests in both thoughtful and entertaining ways, making Dìdi an astoundingly well-rounded work, in which Wang—much like he does in his documentary short—peers into the past in order to reckon with it, while confronting his family’s story while understanding that it is also his own.

Nǎi Nai & Wài Pó is now streaming on Hulu and Disney Plus. Dìdi was acquired at Sundance by Focus Features and will arrive later this year.