“Didi” Movie Review
I didn't expect to like Asian American angst
I. PREFACE
I told my parents that I had started writing again. I struggled to remember the Chinese word for essays. “I’m writing articles, short articles.”
“Oh… are you going to send them to the New York Times?” asked my mom distractedly. Over the phone, I could hear her fixing dinner, three time zones ahead. “Remember, when you were little, you said, ‘Mama, my dream is to be published in the New York Times!’”
I cringed. “No, it’s just personal essays,” I said, finally finding the words. “To practice writing and have fun.”
“OK,” she paused. “So how’s work?”
II. PROLOGUE
After watching the movie Didi this weekend, I had the idea of translating all the posts my mom publishes on WeChat Moments. She’s a prolific writer, documenting her vacation to Japan, the possum she found invading her vegetable patch, the presidential elections, the pictures I send her of my dog.
“This is where you get your writing gene from,” she would say to me, repeatedly. I didn’t believe her until my college roommate, who friended my mom on WeChat and also hails from Ningbo, made the same remark.
When I was growing up, my mom, an insurance agent, would often muse, “When I retire, I’m going to write a book.”
“That sounds like a great idea,” I’d say. “In Chinese?”
“In English.”
III. FINALLY HERE’S THE ACTUAL MOVIE REVIEW
I want to carve out time to write a better formulated review of Didi before the intensity of my initial reactions fades. But I also got an email at 8 pm last night requesting that I review a bunch of things for a client today. So, here’s all you get:
With a blog called “i miss my xanga,” it shouldn’t come as a surprise that I would like a movie about coming of age in 2008. But I, unfairly, had low expectations for Didi. The last few years of Asian American TV and cinema have spoiled me: The Farewell, Past Lives, Turning Red, The Big Sick, Minari, Shang Chi, Beef, Never Have I Ever, the list goes on and on. I’ve grown bored of directors and writers using their own lives as inspiration for work. (Yes, yes, I am very aware that I am a hypocrite for saying this while mining my journal entries for web content.) I hope I don’t lose all of my five subscribers by saying that I felt Past Lives to be a tad melodramatic. If I wanted to introspect about lost opportunities and what could have been, I’d just read my own emo scribbles. I want Asian American films to be more than a mirror of myself.
I’m struggling to succinctly articulate what sets Didi apart.
Specificity: Watching Didi is like unearthing a time capsule you buried from the eighth grade. In it are your AIM username, the people you poked on Facebook, the YouTube videos you filmed with your best friends, a Paramore CD, your Livestrong bracelet. The director Sean Wang brings this loving attention to detail into every scene and character. The things that each character cherishes throughout the movie — whether it’s the hellogoodbye ring tone that the main character, Wang Wang, hastily tries to silence in front of his crush, or his mother’s radiant painting of a cloudscape that no one pauses to comment on or even look at — each speaks volumes about that character.
Honesty: The movie does not shy away from ugly recollections. The diabolical ways that feuding siblings sought revenge. The homophobic and racial epithets that teenage boys used so callously and casually. Doors slammed. Broken dishes. Friends ghosted. Multiple scenes feature Wang Wang running away from being vulnerable: he blocks people he can’t face and wipes his digital memory. I liked how meta the film was — that this movie is the director’s expression of feelings he couldn’t articulate at 14-years-old. His recognition of his mother’s sacrifice and artistic vision. His understanding that nagging is a Taiwanese expression of love. His truce with his sister. The film deems all memories, painful and beautiful, worthy of being depicted, because all of them are part of growing up.
Meta: I love movies and I love movies about filmmakers who love movies. This is not just a coming-of-age film, it’s a love story about how Sean Wang became enamored with filmmaking. In two different scenes, Wang Wang is compared to other directors: first to Spike Jonze and later to Ang Lee. The influences of these two disparate directors are palpable. You see Spike Jonze in the color palette, the vibey soundtrack, reverence for skateboarding and shenanigans, and themes of longing and loneliness. You see Ang Lee in the complex family dynamics, characters with repressed emotions, sparse dialogue and symbolic actions, and themes of food and its centrality in Taiwanese culture. I love that this multicultural fusion of influences is united in a classic American genre — the teen comedy. Watching this reminded me of the era of Superbad, Easy A, and Juno, but with a slightly younger cast and a Taiwanese-American spin.
Didi is ultimately an expression of the lesson that the titular character learns throughout the film: that the only person you can be is yourself.
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Didi is coming to the end of its run but still showing in some places. At Kabuki, it’s $7 on Tuesdays — a low investment if you think this kind of film might not be your jam. Sweet soundtrack too: