Dìdi

Names have power. They define a thing, and that’s why they can be so challenging – especially when you’re trying to work out who you are. Say you’re a graduating middle schooler in 2008 in Fremont, Calif. To the friends who have known you for years, you’re Wang Wang because that shit’s funny. With the cool high school skate mutants that you’re trying to impress, you’re Chris. But at home you’re Dìdi, the rebellious little brother to Vivian (Shirley Chen), who can’t wait to get to college and away from you. You’re the beloved grandson of your increasingly infirm Nai Nai (Chang Li Hua). And you’re the darling baby boy turned foul-mouthed headache to Chungsing (Joan Chen), a frustrated artist who has dedicated her life to raising her kids alone while her husband works in Taiwan.

Dìdi, the debut narrative feature from award-winning documentarian Sean Wang, can be seen as a tale of code switching, but that could potentially just pigeonhole it as an immigrant story. It’s broader than that because it’s a more universal study of being a teenage boy, trying to find something like a sense of identity and working out which lies you can and can’t tell yourself. In the voice of Chris (Izaac Wang), there’s the gargling tone of prepubescence, when every word that falls out of your mouth hits your own ears like an anvil, adding to his awkwardness. There’s a delightful preposterousness about how he and his friends try to sound like they’re straight out of Compton when they’re all the children of relatively affluent Asian immigrants in a tonier part of town. It’s like they’d rolled past the skate punks of Jonah Hill’s mid90s as a baby in the back of mom’s Suburban and still thought they were the coolest thing ever.

The faux gangsta-isms are fitting, as Sean Wang embeds Dìdi deeply in the summer of 2008, with constant third wave emo needle drops soundtracking Chris’ real life while he tries to navigate his interpersonal relationships through MySpace and IM. For those of you old enough to have lived through this time, Abe Simpson’s speech about how he used to be with “it,” but then they changed what “it” was, will sting in your ears. Yes, the details of the era may spark laughs of recognition in some and bewilderment in others. Yet as the story evolves, the film increasingly leaves the cultural markers implicit – which is beneficial, since the early scenes pour on the period references so heavily that you’ll expect Grandpa to turn up and start rambling about tying an onion to his belt (look it up, Gen Zers). But as time goes on Wang seems to realize that he doesn’t need to name-check Fight Club or jackass or Tony Hawk because they’re just in the soul of the story.

Those early laughs dry up over time as the pain of being Chris, and the pain inflicted by Chris, only becomes more obvious. Dìdi isn’t a hero’s journey. It’s a morality tale. Chris can be unbearable at times, an insufferable prick who alienates everyone in his circle at some point or other. But that’s what being a teenager means, and that’s the strength of Wang’s story. He’s not judgmental but observational, and Izaac Wang is a perfect vessel for this story. He seems to shrink and grow in between scenes, hiding inside his sister’s stolen hoodie, or hurling abuse at his undeserving mother. The scenes with Joan Chen are the only times at which his performance is overshadowed, but that’s not simply because Chen paints an astonishing portrait of a woman whose life is not what she wished. It’s because these scenes contain Wang’s true message about acceptance of imperfection. Those elements have more poignancy than Wang’s period dressings, which sometimes feel like an autobiographical security blanket for a filmmaker who never needed them.