Film Review: Didi

4 Stars

By Joseph Beyer | Sept. 21, 2024

The Sundance Film Festival, which takes place in January of each year, has long been the storied holy ground for personal, coming-of-age stories. Audiences and juries have awarded a long list of these projects with their highest festival honors, from Ruby in Paradise (1993) to Real Women Have Curves (2003) to Precious (2009), among dozens of others.

So prevalent is the festival love for these quintessential independent films, there is a saying about audiences having “altitude sickness” for these small, scrappy stories (a term coined by distributors to describe the disconnect between artistic awards and commercial success in the marketplace, as many of the most lauded films in the history of the festival have also had the toughest time succeeding).

This year, audiences and juries together bestowed unconditional love on Sean Wang’s dramedy Dìdi (弟弟), a semi-autobiographical portrait of an awkward misfit desperately trying to find his self-confidence and fit in. The narrative of a Taiwanese-American boy growing up in California in the mid-aughts won both the Audience Award and a Special Jury Prize for the Acting Ensemble at the 2024 festival.

Such accolades are the stuff filmmaker “dreams are made on,” and just days later, Focus Features picked up worldwide rights and has released the film in theaters and VOD this summer. Dìdi (弟弟) is accomplished, heartfelt, and beautifully performed (even as the sometimes patient pace may have you feeling restless).

With a centerpiece performance as the title character Chris, aka Dìdi, young actor Izaac Wang captures the frustrations and rewards of trying to make his way through puberty with an absent father and overbearing women he tries to understand. With the iconic and accomplished actress Joan Chen as his mother, Shirley Chen as his sister, Chang Li Hua as his grandmother/nǎi nai, and Mahaela Park as the girl of his dreams, the ensemble is deserving of high praise.

Working together, the cast captures the modern dysfunctions of family and the loneliness of those who feel they need to sacrifice culture in order to acclimate to America. 

There is nothing new in this familiar narrative approach, but it will still break your heart as you’ll be forced to remember the brutality of growing up. Complicating the normal dread of adolescence is the emergence of clam-phones, MySpace, and the comparative culture and cruelty that social media brings to the first generation growing up with it.

Born in 1994, writer and director Wang is a mere 30 years old here in his debut. His millennial perspective on age-old themes is not only fresh, but it expands the diaspora of teenage dramas in a significant way. And he’s just getting started. 

Having ventured out to see a limited release screening of Dìdi (弟弟) here in Traverse City, I watched the film in an empty theater, which admittedly drained it of some energy. Having seen the impact of packed Sundance audiences riveted by performances just like these, I hope Dìdi (弟弟) gives you that same altitude sickness it did so many others.

The film is currently offered at $19.99 on multiple VOD platforms. Focus Features should be applauded for taking a chance on the project but shamed for that price point, as should Sundance Film Festival, which charged a whopping $25 for a single online ticket to stream Dìdi (弟弟) as it was simultaneously premiering in Utah. 

If audiences are going to return to taking a chance on small movies from emerging artists like Wang, there has to be a more affordable way.