THERE IS SOMETHING horrendous about the politics of being 13 — the raging hormones, the prepubescent brinkmanship; nobody knows what they’re doing, and everyone wants you to think that they do. Such is the case for Chris Wang (played by Izaac Wang), aka Wang Wang, aka Dìdi, aka Half-Asian Chris (he’s not actually half-Asian). Chris is having a bit of an identity crisis.
Director Sean Wang’s Dìdi is a love letter to adolescence rendered with painstaking specificity, a period piece set in his own childhood home of Fremont, Calif., during the era of T9 texting and AOL instant messenger.
It’s the summer before freshman year in 2008 and Chris is getting into shenanigans: skating with his friends, wondering if he should send a :) or a ;) to his crush, and generally feeling emotions nobody else could possibly understand. Plus, his mother keeps arguing with his grandmother and asking if he’s feeling sad — so annoying. And his sister, who sucks, obviously, is leaving for college, but at least she has good taste in music (or rather, she likes the same music as Chris’ crush).
There is such frenetic volatility to early adolescence.
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