I can’t believe we’re at the point where we can have nostalgia for 2008, but we obviously are. I’m too old to be in that position myself, and if you’re the same, I suggest you watch the new movie Dìdi with someone a bit younger than you, because there’s a lot about teenage life in the 2000s that’s packed into this sweet film, and a lot you’re going to miss if you don’t have someone pointing things out to you.
In the broad sense, this movie is something we’ve seen before, a coming-of-age story about a teenage boy trying to figure out the direction he wants to take while navigating a frustrating family, girls, and his own poor decisions, which are really just teenage decisions, and aren’t even all that poor, in the grand scheme of things. But it’s also funny and charming, and it’s important for people to keep telling these stories, because each generation’s experience is a little different in the details.
I figure at least some of this film is autobiographical, with the movie directed by Sean Wang about a kid named Chris Wang who becomes interested in camerawork and filmmaking. But the part that resonated with me the most is in Wang’s treatment of Chris’s mother, played by Joan Chen, who is always welcome on my screen. Like anyone who’s raised children, she’s set aside a lot of her earlier dreams to create new ones that involve her kids, she’s put up with a whole lot, and she loves the heck out of them. She sees her kids for who they are, even when that’s exasperating, and you can feel how generally exhausted and elated she is simply by having them in her life. Dìdi may be focused on Chris, but it pays enough attention to his mother that it’s a lovely addition to a movie that would have been plenty entertaining, but more lightweight without her.
Dìdi is in theaters.
