It takes a certain maturity to make – and appreciate – a good coming-of-age film. Sean Wang’s debut feature is the tale of Chris Wang (Izaac Wang, no relation to the director), a Taiwanese American boy growing up in the Bay Area, California, in the late 00s – a time of AOL Instant Messenger and emo punk posturing. But it’s also about Chris’s mum, Chungsing (Joan Chen), offering a compassionate insight into the struggles of an immigrant parent that few self-involved 13-year-olds could muster.
The tender teen years have been lovingly chronicled by successive generations of first-time US film-makers, but up until fairly recently it was rare for kids such as Chris – the children of immigrants from places like India, Korea, China and Iran – to see their young lives reflected on screen with any kind of cultural specificity. Much less the woven-in, naturalistic kind that Dìdi pursues from its title onwards: “Dìdi”, the Chinese word for “little brother”, is what Chris’s family call him, an endearing, slightly infantilising nickname that he is all too eager to shake off. Whereas outside home, Chris introduces himself as Wang Wang, a juvenile and mildly insulting nickname that he doesn’t yet realise he’s ready to outgrow.
