by Lisa Nystrom
Worth: $18.50
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Izaac Wang, Joan Chen, Shirley Chen, Chang Li Hua, Raul Dial
Intro:
… sure to resonate with anyone who’s ever felt out of place or had a deep longing just to feel seen.
Director Sean Wang’s transition to feature length films has proven to be equally as impactful as his previous work in documentary shorts. Making waves at Sundance this year, the director’s debut feature Didi went home with both the Audience Award: U.S. Dramatic and the U.S. Dramatic Special Jury Award: Ensemble.
Deeply emotional with a thread of affectionate humour woven throughout, Didi is a semi-autobiographical coming of age story set in 2008, during the early years of the internet when MySpace was thriving and flip phones were considered cutting edge. Scrolling blogs, finding just the right emoticon to text your crush, and curating YouTube uploads all serve as a clever stand-in for characters’ inner monologues, the familiarity with online spaces both comfortingly nostalgic and a jarring reminder that that particular golden age is now more than 15 years in the rearview mirror, officially making this a period film.
Chris Wang (Izaac Wang) is a 13-year-old Taiwanese American boy, known as Didi to his mother (Joan Chen) and his Nǎi Nai (Chang Li Hua), and Wang Wang to almost everyone else. He’s at the stage of life where he’s still figuring it all out — skating, dating, and the elusive skill of “fitting in”. Chris’s insecurity about his cultural identity and his general aura of inexperience is the driving force behind most of his big decisions. It’s hard not to feel left behind when his buddies Farad (Raul Diad) and Soup (Aaron Chang) seem to effortlessly know how to talk to girls, meanwhile Chris isn’t even making the cut of their MySpace Top 8.
In a nuanced depiction of adolescence, Isaac Wang swings from melancholy to hot-headed to excitable, giving an authentic portrayal of the volatility of teenagehood. Cinematographer Sam Davis makes some really fun choices, specifically when recreating Chris’s attempts at documenting his skater friends with his wonderfully grainy camcorder. Sporadic glimpses into Chris’s own imagination are also delightfully eccentric, from reanimated squirrels (voiced by Spike Jonze) to the corpse of a fish offering affirmations during an awkward dinner, like the deranged parody of a Disney sidekick.
It’s a perfect storm of teenage angst and hormones (and a gentle reminder that your parents might be cringe but deep down they’re people too), and while the story itself might not be breaking new ground, it is sure to resonate with anyone who’s ever felt out of place or had a deep longing just to feel seen.
