SEPT 12, 2024 | ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT | By Yeowon Jung
Set in 2008 in the sunny suburb of Fremont, Calif., “DIDI” (弟弟) captures Chris Wang’s tumultuous final summer before high school as he struggles to accept the dwindling friendships he believed would last a lifetime. Wang is also wrestling with his feelings for his crush, Madi, his inability to talk to her in a remotely normal way, and the tension that fills his immigrant family. Like most people reading this, I have been 13 years old, too. I’ve lost friends, had crushes and no one’s home life is perfect. I was enthusiastic about this movie, hoping that despite the generational difference, I might find some ringing notes of connection.
We begin at the dinner table: Chris is fighting with (or more accurately, shrieking at) his sister Vivian and neither of them bother to hold back any words. Despite it being her last summer before university, Vivian has no qualms about brawling with her 13-year-old brother. Chris’ mother is passive and quiet while his grandmother scolds her daughter-in-law for her lack of discipline. It is evident — the Wang household, composed of Chris, Vivian, his mother, grandmother and an absent father, is one of great agitation.
Amidst these scenes of familial hostility, we watch Chris’ social life unravel when he finds himself drifting further and further from one of his closest friends, Fahad. Fahad is charismatic, tall and tells intriguing stories with humorous and dramatic flair, whereas Chris is awkward, short and can only remember one story involving a dead squirrel’s tail being torn off by centrifugal force (this story is, unfortunately, wildly unpopular with the girls). He grows increasingly insecure and even tries to create a persona, one who is half Asian and a seasoned skate filmer, to get along with older, cooler boys. Things go south with Madi, his crush, and he takes his friends’ disappointment in his romantic failure just as hard as, if not harder than, his estrangement from Madi.
Under the weight of these adolescent tragedies, an indignant and resentful Chris lashes out and punches another boy after he gets insulted. His mother, upset and confused about his violence, is met with rage. While the boy’s comments towards Chris are unwarranted, Chris refuses to take responsibility for his own actions and instead blames his recklessness on his mother and the way she raised him. He goes as far as to claim that if his father had been the primary figure during his upbringing, he might have been a better son. It’s clear from this heated scene that Chris does not see Chungsing Wang, his mother, as anything more than that — someone who must always support him and someone who doesn’t exist outside of his life.
His brutality stunned me. Like many parents, Wang nagged her children about eating well and paying attention in school but she was certainly no villain. It was easy for me to categorize Chris as one of the 13-year-old boys who hate their mother simply because there is no one else they can push their frustrations upon.
At the end of that argument, Chris runs away while his mother watches helplessly. After stumbling across a playground and spending the night underneath a slide, Chris returns home to his mother — despite all the sarcastic comments that Chris muttered under his breath, his mindless disregard for her efforts to keep the Wang family afloat and their overall precarious and emotionally fraught relationship — as she welcomes him back like a prodigal son. This moment of love in my opinion, is the culmination of the film.
As Sean Wang’s first feature film and directorial debut, “DIDI” was not what I expected. “DIDI,” meaning ‘little brother’ in Mandarin, created a character that irked me in exactly the way I assume a bratty younger brother might. I won’t come out and say that I adored his character because I don’t think we were meant to. I mean, could I even exactly explain the reasoning behind this boy’s fury? A combination of hormones, a lack of identity that fueled his insecurity, his mother’s words that somehow got on his every nerve and the silence of his father. But did I even need an explanation? A fully fleshed one was an unnecessary expectation to begin with. This movie was both the life of a cringy, angry, awkward and insecure Taiwanese American boy and a testament to his mother’s unshakeable love.
By the end of it, I both disapproved of and enjoyed Chris Wang’s character. What Sean Wang does in this semi-autobiographical story is take the sentimentality of childhood and smush it between his fingers. Wang refuses the rose-colored lens of nostalgia and brutally showcases the strained relationship between a loud-angry son and his quiet mother. He rips away every possible filter dampening the ugliness of Chris’ character, so when Chungsing’s motherly love ceaselessly shone through it all, I was overcome with awe and admiration.
I won’t deny that I teared up at the end, shocked by her words of kindness and unconditional love. I am excited for Wang’s emerging career and look forward to what other unique stories he will bring to cinema.