Coming-of-age dramas often act as time capsules, especially if they are drawn from a filmmaker’s experiences. Be it “Sing Street,” “The Last Picture Show,” or “Dazed and Confused,” coming-of-age films often capture the essence of the time they are set in. Sean Wang’s “Didi” (2024) is a glowing addition to this list of titles. The film is set in the late 2000s when “Superbad” and Paramore’s “Riot” had just been released. One captured the naivety of awkward adolescence, while the other amplified the feeling of teenage rebellion and provided an outlet for self-expression.
At the time, YouTube was in its early years, and Myspace was still the social media portal where people revealed bits about themselves. “Didi” uses all these time-specific details to follow its protagonist without cliches or sentimentality and emerges as one of the most evocative dramas set in that period.
Spoilers Ahead
Didi (2024) Plot Summary & Movie Synopsis:
Written & directed by Sean Wang, “Didi” is a coming-of-age comedy-drama set in the late 2000s. It follows a 13-year-old Taiwanese-American boy during the last month before his high school begins.
What happens in ‘Didi’ (2024)?
Set in 2008, “Didi” follows Chris Wang (Izaac Wang), a Taiwanese-American teenager who lives with his mother, Chungsing (Joan Chen), his sister Vivian (Shirley Chen), and his grandmother (Zhang Li Hua) in Suburban America. We notice signs of puberty, from his pimpled face to his teenage angst. He often gets into needless arguments with Vivian. Chungsing does not understand how to control either of them. Their father remains missing from the picture, working offshore to earn them a living. So, Nai Nai expects Chungsing to be an ideal and protective parent in every possible way.
Chris’ Teenage Troubles
Chris is caught up in his own set of worries as a teenager. He watches skateboarding videos on YouTube and secretly practices the skills. Chris also has a YouTube channel where he posts videos he makes with his close friends, mainly with Fahad (Raul Dial). At this age, he naturally starts discovering love and romantic attraction. Chris develops a crush on a girl called Madi (Mahaela Park). He checks details on her Myspace profile to get to know her better. There, he realizes she likes Paramore’s Hayley Williams. So, Chris wears a T-shirt with their album cover during their mutual friend’s party. She admires that and tells him to add her as a friend.
Back home, Chris opens a Facebook account with fake details to speak with Madi. On the other hand, he keeps documenting everything around him that piques his interest and posts those videos on YouTube. One day, he joins his friends in a park and gets beaten up by a kid. Nai Nai blames Chungsing for not being responsible enough for caring for her children. However, Chungsing doesn’t talk back to her. She also realizes Chris’ emotional state, trying desperately to fit in somewhere. He doesn’t appreciate her work while she spends her spare time painting. She tries to stay connected with him and looks for any chance to know him better.
Love and Friendship
Chris opens a Facebook account and becomes friends with Madi. He realizes she loves the 2002 film “A Walk to Remember,” so he pretends to love it too. After talking on the messenger, they decide to meet at a park. Before meeting, he anxiously reads about how to kiss for the first time. However, he hesitates when they finally meet.
Since he gets nervous about kissing her, she feels rejected. Still, later, she reaches out to him online, but he avoids any interaction with her. On the other hand, he also struggles with friendship. One day, he bumps into three skateboarders, Donovan, Cory, and Nugget, who are a few years older than him. He offers to film their videos, and they accept.
Back home, Chris deletes all his old YouTube videos so that he won’t embarrass himself in front of these skateboarders. He joins his mother for dinner with their family friends. The other woman sings praises of her son’s achievements. Chungsing also proudly talks about Chris’s interests, even if they don’t interest her friend. Chris starts getting annoyed by Vivian’s mean-spirited comments and confronts her. She realizes he is going through some issues but will probably not discuss them with her. So, she changes her attitude toward him to offer him a safe space. Soon, Chris and Fahad go on a double date with two girls. Fahad tries to impress them with a Dave Chappelle comic routine.
Chris’s Growth as a Teenager
Unlike Fahad, Chris doesn’t quite understand how to approach or speak with girls. So, he shares an embarrassing story about him, Fahad, and their friends when they blasted a dead squirrel. The girls find Chris’s behavior strange and abandon him. So, Chris returns home with his mother. During the journey, she tries to lighten up the mood, even at the expense of her embarrassment. Later, she signs him up for extra tuition, and he reluctantly joins. Soon, Donovan contacts Chris to shoot their videos. At the time, Chungsing was in a heated argument with Nai Nai. Vivian offers to drop him off and becomes the parental figure that he craves at the time.
Eventually, Chris shows up with his camcorder to shoot the video but doesn’t shoot quite as expected. Back home, he looks at video tutorials to improve his skills. One day, Fahad notices Chris with his new cool friends and asks if he can join them for the party. Chris rejects that offer since Fahad did the same to him before. Instead, Chris joins the skateboarders for drinks, smokes a blunt with them, and gets high. Luckily, Vivian brings him back home and hides it from their mother. Soon, she leaves home to go to college. Once she leaves, he succumbs to ennui.
Didi (2024) Movie Ending Explained:
After hanging out with skateboarders for a while, shooting their videos, Chris shows them the recorded clips. Unlike what they expected, the footage doesn’t reveal the stunts since Chris couldn’t focus on them then. While they discuss it in his room, his mother shows up. The friends praise her artwork, but Chris finds her interruption embarrassing. Unlike him, they don’t. They find it odd that he humiliates his mother. So, they leave him. Left alone, he gets vulnerable with SmarterChild (a chatbot) and speaks about his loneliness. Later, he meets Madi’s guy friend, who insults him for not kissing Madi. So, in a fit of anger, Chris punches him.
What makes Chris reflect on his relationship with his mother?
Chungsing confronts him for beating Madi’s friend. He feels his behavior is a result of his father’s absence. So, he lashes out without thinking how his mother would feel. He calls her useless, unlike his father, who earns them a living. He feels Chungsing is embarrassed by him since she cannot brag about his achievements as her friends can. Subsequently, he runs away and spends the night outside their house. The following day, he returns home wondering why his mother didn’t look for him before. He asks her whether that is because she is embarrassed of him. She reveals that Vivian also ran away when she was 14. That’s because, at the time, Chungsing didn’t allow Vivian to go for a sleepover.
Chungsing believes Chris isn’t as stubborn as Vivian. That’s why she didn’t go looking for him at night. She opens up about her past and her unfulfilled hopes and dreams of being a painter. Chungsing would have loved to have an artistic career in New York. She occasionally contemplated a life without her husband or the kids. However, she saw them as her dreams after Chris and Vivian’s birth. She stayed faithful to their hopes despite her emotional struggles. Hearing that makes Chris change his mind about his mother and look at her compassionately. After graduation, he enters his new school and crosses paths with Madi.
What does the ending of ‘Didi’ mean in Chris’s journey?
Chris apologizes to Madi, but she isn’t ready to have him in her life because he cut their contact. Moments later, he starts looking for the courses he wants to apply. Somewhere around, he notices Fahad and the guy he recently beat up. Chris only nods at them and gets back to his business. He hops in a car with his mother after signing up for a visual arts club. Back home, as Nai Nai falls asleep, Chris has his meal, and Chungsing endearingly looks at him. All the interactions at the end of “Didi” show Chris accepting his mistakes and moving on with his life, even without those he once held dear.
Didi (2024) Movie Themes Analyzed:
Teenage Bewilderment
As a coming-of-age drama, “Didi” examines the bewilderment one feels in their early to mid-teens. It shows Chris’s confusion about his newfound romantic emotions for not having the communication tools to express himself. When Madi approaches him for a kiss, he feels embarrassed for being nervous. So, later, he cuts contact with her to hide his embarrassment. He also hates his mother because he doesn’t understand all the new feelings he is experiencing.
On the other hand, he likely feels sad that his sister is leaving soon. However, he cannot convey this affection due to their otherwise strained relationship, so he lashes out at her out of his urge for rebellion. Throughout the film, we see Chris struggling to express himself. Vivian and Chungsing realize that, so they offer him a safe space.
Gender Dynamic
“Didi” is not a preachy document of gender discrimination. However, it shows the subtle ways in which it seeps into our daily lives. As a parent, Nai Nai cares for her son more than her daughter-in-law, even though Chungsing tirelessly works for the family’s joy. On the other hand, Chungsing seems a bit more caring toward Chris than she is toward Vivian. Despite her affection, Chris thinks his mother is useless while his father is resourceful. Still, she cares for the kids while their father remains absent. He may not feel the guilt or shame she feels (or is made to feel) for being an imperfect parent. So, although not glaringly evident, the film has subtle hints of the ingrained patriarchal mindset of male superiority in most of us.
