An awkward preteen navigating self-identity under the pressure of their peers’ perceptions is a timeless coming-of-age trope. Maybe you have seen it in Bo Burnham’s “Eighth Grade” or Stephen Chbosky’s “The Perks of Being a Wallflower.” Adult directors tell these stories through self-reflective lenses, leaving us feeling nostalgic about our awkward adolescent years of uncertainty and self-discovery.
Sean Wang’s “Dìdi” captures this nostalgia flawlessly. “Dìdi” is unapologetic and honest, and immersses its audience in the messy, uncomfortable and imperfect years of growing up.
Released on July 26, the film follows a 13-year-old Taiwanese American boy, Chris Wang, as he navigates the summer before his first year of high school.
Chris lives in Fremont with his mother Chungsing, his older sister Vivian and his grandmother, whom he calls Nai-nai. The film takes place in 2008, so Chris spends his days browsing YouTube, MySpace and occasionally Facebook. He uses his camcorder to record skateboarding videos and pranks that he pulls alongside his best friends, Fahad and Soup. Chris’s family calls him Dìdi, which is Mandarin for little brother, while his friends know him as Wang Wang.
Chris is in an awkward state, grappling with the desire to fit in while struggling with self-acceptance. To impress a girl, he pretends that his favorite movie is A Walk to Remember, even though he has never watched it. He exaggerates his level of filming experience to befriend a group of skaters and even lies about his race in hopes of being loved and accepted by them.
Chris’s identity struggles are relatable to many. “I think we’ve all wanted to fit in at some point in our lives,” Kyle Speta ’26 said. “When I was younger, I would lie about certain things so I could come off as cool to my friends.”
At the same time, a middle-schooler’s immature behavior is frustrating. “The first time I saw ‘Dìdi’ … it was in a filled-up theater and there were just so many audible reactions,” Maurillo said. “Like when [Chris] calls a girl ‘stupid b—-,’ and then he tries to [play it off] by saying he thought that was her nickname. … I’m like, ‘Bro, how are you that dumb?’”
Chris’s preoccupation with fitting in also manifests as irritation toward his immigrant mother, Chungsing, whom he is constantly brushing off. In one scene, Chris reacts to Chungsing’s burger-eating method – she uses a fork and a knife – with a judgemental glare and the words, “What are you doing? … You’re so Asian.”
“As a first-generation American, with parents whose third language is English, ‘Dìdi’ resonated with me because it mirrored exactly the annoying way that I treated my parents when I was little,” Leili Kamali ’25 said. “I didn’t understand them as full people … I just saw the things that I would have to help them with, like translating or opening emails.”
Part of what makes Dìdi’s story so authentic is the unfiltered banter Chris engages in with his friends and his family. All of the characters riff off each other with natural ease, giving their relationships to each other a sense of realness and relatability.
In the film, Sunil Maurillo plays Corey, a skateboarder who befriends Chris. In an interview with The Urban Legend, he explained that this realness was largely due to the director’s flexibility and the actors’ real-life similarity to their characters. “We received a script, and [the director] would kind of let us tweak the lines,” Maurillo said. “I was trying to make it natural, especially because I was just playing myself in some way. [Wang would] let us ad-lib hella.”
Later in the film, Chris’s perspective of Chungsing deepens when he learns that she sacrificed her dreams to pursue a painting career in order to care for him. “[When I was little], I was maybe a little embarrassed of [my mom] and her affection for me. When [Chungsing] had an outburst, it reminded me of when you’re all of a sudden hit with the amount of responsibility that your mom has,” Kamali said. “It shows you a bit of how human they are.”
Watching Chris learn to love both himself and his mother reminds us of the lessons our own adolescent years have taught us. “I think it’s important that people take away that you’re gonna have your identity forever. You can’t really change it, so you have to accept it. And you know, people aren’t gonna care about that as much as you think,” Maurillo said.
