Unmissable! California Boy’s Life-Changing Summer Search for Identity in Breathtaking ‘Dìdi’

In the era of Y2K, a memorable line was sung by Mark Hoppus of Blink-182: “Well, I guess this is growing up.” The band’s popular track “Dammit” came out in 1997, a decade before the timeline of Sean Wang’s first narrative feature, “Dìdi”, which is set in 2008 Fremont, California. Still, the touching pop-punk sentiment lingers on in this coming-of-age period drama.

The main character, Chris (played by Izaac Wang), is at a challenging crossroads: the summer before his freshman year of high school. His identity is in a state of flux, teetering on the volatile ground of personal insecurities, changing friendships, family expectations, and his fluctuating sense of self is depicted in the film through his various names and nicknames.

At home, his mother, Chungsing (Joan Chen), and grandmother, Nai Nai (Chang Li Hua), affectionately call him “Dìdi”, which means “little brother” in Mandarin. His middle school friends refer to him as “Wang Wang”, a playful nickname among his longtime friend circle, who act mature beyond their years. However, he’s starting to feel that he might just want to be known as “Chris”, which is how he introduces himself to a group of slightly older skaters when he’s seeking a sense of belonging during a summer in Northern California.

In this semi-autobiographical story, writer-director Wang focuses on this specific, fleeting period of life, lasting just a couple of months, and scrutinizes it under his cinematic lens, exploring all the uncomfortable pain and fleeting joys of this age. Wang previously delved into his Taiwanese American family background for his Oscar-nominated short documentary “Nai Nai & Wài Pó” last year, which was about his grandmothers, one of whom appears in “Dìdi” as Chris’ grandmother.

Apart from the cultural and geographical details, Wang also investigates the unique visual and auditory environment where the story unfolds. Chris and his friends, who are from a diverse mix of East and Southeast Asian American families, grow up in a digital world filled with MySpace Top 8s, power-pop band merch, and the sound of AOL Instant Message notifications. The film opens with a shaky, grainy YouTube video of Chris and his friends causing a mailbox to explode, capturing his innocent, childlike face in a freeze frame as he sprints away.

Wang employs this mixed-media method to depict Chris’s life, lived as much online as offline, and the contrasts in style mirrors what’s happening internally for Chris. Low-resolution DV camera footage of Chris’s pranks and skateboarding tricks that he posts online is contrasted with the warm, intimate close-ups elsewhere in the film’s cinematography (by Sam A. Davies). Chris’s real-life social interactions are clumsy and naive, unlike his online conversations, which are enhanced by frantic Google and Facebook searches, as he trolls personal pages for information. So much of his life is seen through computer screens that in real life, he struggles.

But it’s not just social media that defines his world. Race and culture also play a pivotal role in shaping his reality, and Wang allows this theme to gradually and permanently surface, letting the audience see how Chris navigates his Asian American identity. Things are easier among his Korean and Pakistani friends, but with the white and Black skater guys and their crew, he feels uncomfortable with the nickname “Asian Chris,” the only nickname he tries to change — an attempt that ultimately backfires.

“Dìdi” is largely about the awkward, unintentional mistakes that Chris makes in his clumsy attempts at forming connections: blocking the instant messages of his crush, Madi (Mahaela Park), instead of expressing his feelings; deleting a bunch of videos he took of his new skater friends just because one was not perfect; losing his temper at a classmate during a PSAT tutoring session. But Izaac Wang’s portrayal of this tormented teenager — so young, still wearing braces — is a sensitive depiction of the insecurity Chris feels around others and his concern about how he will be perceived. Wang’s performance is echoed by Chen as his mother, a homemaker with a creative spirit. She strikes a delicate balance between toughness and vulnerability in a deeply moving performance.

Sean Wang’s dedication to realism means that some of the storylines don’t seem entirely resolved — much like in real life. Chris messes up, he broods, he does his best to make amends, and things don’t always tie up neatly. He keeps moving forward, trying to discover who he is, what he wants, and to feel secure enough to cherish those brief, blissful moments of connection and freedom. Friends may come and go, but family is constant. We observe his journey to reach that simple yet profound understanding and, well, I guess this is growing up.

Katie Walsh is a film critic for the Tribune News Service.