While trying to chat up classmate Madi (Mahaela Park) on AIM, Chris (Izaac Wang) skims her MySpace for an “in”. Then, beneath all the Paramore pictures and low-res GIFs is a list of her favorite movies. Oh, A Walk to Remember is one of them. He fakes loving it; “its helllllla good,” he says. Now he has to maintain that––at least for a few scenes. This sort of thing happens throughout Sean Wang’s feature directorial debut. The character moments flow on a moment-to-moment basis and the period detail is quite good beneath it. Ultimately, Dìdi (弟弟) works despite its untapped potential.
Summer 2008 is coming to an end. The youngest of his Taiwanese-American family, Chris gets ready for high school while his sister Vivian (Shirley Chen) prepares to go to college. Their mother, a painter named Chungsing (Joan Chen), exists in the script’s peripheries for stretches, while grandmother Nai Nai (Zhang Li Hua) remains little more than a symbol of family rather than an actual character. Whether it’s the uneven writing or the main character’s selfishness, people are ephemeral in the scope of Dìdi. They exist solely in relation to Chris himself: his wants, his insecurities, his illusions of connection (whether spoken or digitized). It’s a tricky line to walk.
The story lacks form or structure. The film’s supporting characters are almost passively stimulation for both the protagonist and audience. Not all of Dìdi is thorough; it exists as a collection of moments and traits, albeit brought to life by its cast. Take a moment early on, when Vivian and Chris fight during dinner. It rings all too true in the moment, and once it ends Vivian’s all but out of the picture. From family members to the friend groups Chris flows between, the movie renders its characters forgettable when they aren’t present.
It makes sense in theory. Chris is a solipsistic high school freshman, a late-millennial preoccupied with the Internet as he grows alongside it. And while he may be the focus, the rhythm at which Wang approaches this period of his life can make everyone else feel underwritten unless the film sees them through a computer screen. At its best, Dìdi expounds itself vis-à-vis technology, loosely threading themes of culture, adolescence, and experiences generally unique to those born in the mid-90s.
Chris trying to flirt with Madi? That works because Dìdi leans into the transitory period of social media: MySpace giving way to Facebook in the twilight years of AIM and T9 texting. A chunk where he tries filming some skate kids (Chiron Cillia Denk, Sunil Mukherjee Maurillo, Montay Boseman) despite a lack of experience looks at, if not necessarily interrogates, the refraction of one’s hobbies in a sliver of time when YouTube was ubiquitous-but-divorced from any commodity or tangible purpose. By placing these threads against the divide between second-generation Chris and his first-generation mother, Dìdi posits generational and cultural differences as being two sides of the same coin. The pieces are often there, even when they don’t always work.
That makes it appropriate, if occasionally jarring, for Dìdi to feel like a series of videos as much as it does a film. Chris doesn’t seem to know too much about pop culture; in a moment of embarrassment early on, he reveals himself as having not seen Star Wars, E.T., or Jaws. A lot of his knowledge is inductive, often reliant on a sort of pop-culture osmosis. The movie’s syntax follows suit: perceptive but generally lacking in attention. Add a reference to Spike Jonze (who also makes a voice cameo) and the result is at least reverent to media, emulating a pubertal ignorance while gesturing toward a shift in visual arts.
It’s a fascinating approach that, confined to just 93 minutes, is a blessing and a curse. It maintains a mercurial propulsion, but a more daring screenplay may have pushed this form and structure against itself to a stronger degree. It continuously relies on those character moments to operate. What helps Dìdi survive its fractured pieces and under-cooked dynamics is a depiction of Eastern culture amid Western hegemony. The patterns at which Chris endures his peers’ casual racism and suppresses his own lineage isn’t just fascinating, it’s the most consistent part of a film that’s often anything but, implicating culture both personal and popular.
Attempts to tie itself into a familial tale, on the other hand, often feel unfinished. Dìdi tries to explore Chris and Chungsing’s relationship on a personal level rather than a semiotic one as its overall construction favors. Thus it tends to force a cleaner script onto a messy story. If it were wholly fragmented, its focal inconsistencies would make more sense. It isn’t, though, and that dissonance oversimplifies itself at points, preventing everyone but Chris from having their own internal lives. Sometimes it adds to the experience. Sometimes it feels incomplete.
Joan Chen does great work anchoring a half-written part, her mix of apprehension and exhaustion signaling something the movie should have investigated more. Dìdi is far more attuned to its depictions of heritage and code-switching than the people in Chris’ family, who function more as dressing until the script needs more from them. It’s a bit like him in that way. As a narrative, it’s a bit of a mess. While expanding some of its snapshots could’ve helped, the approach works well enough, welcoming a director to watch in the process.
Dìdi (弟弟) is now limited release.
The post Dìdi (弟弟) Review: Snapshots of Growing Up in an Early Social Media Age first appeared on The Film Stage.
