Movie Review: Didi

 

Michael's Movie Grade: B+

An excellent coming of age story. 

For this film, director/writer/producer Sean Wang reaches back into his teenage years. The fact that this is a very personal film can be felt throughout the movie. He takes an unflinching and brutally honest look at this time period. He is not afraid to make this an uncomfortable watch at times. There are moments in this movie that simply feel painful to watch. Yet the painful moments are what make it feel so real. These painful moments are especially felt when we dig into the main character's deep seeded loneliness. Though many films take a look at teenagers who never feel they actually fit in; this movie truly explores the loneliness that can be felt when you feel alone in the world. For anyone who has ever felt loneliness on this deep of a level (something I certainly have felt), it is hard not to connect with these scenes on a deep personal level. The connection to this character is the film's most important asset. When he tries to pretend to be someone, he is not for a chance to fit it, we feel embarrassed for him. The reason for this is not any sense of pity, but rather the knowledge that at his age, we all did something similar. We have all lied about having seen a movie that we haven't, typed something on social media that we thought would make us seem cool and/or claimed to be an expert on something we weren't. Yet there are moments of warmth and tenderness here too. These scenes are completely necessary. Even the saddest movies need moments of relief because there is only so much an audience can take. However, the main reason these warm and touching moments are necessary is that they add to the authenticity of this movie. One beautiful thing about life is that even in our darkest moments, there are moments of brightness and warmth. This movie captures both the joyous and the sad moments very well. What this movie also does very well is to explore the relationship between our main character and his family. The relationships he has with his mom and his sister are very well realized. At first, they seem to be very simplistic relationships. However, over the course of the film the relationships grow to be something more complicated and very touching. 

This movie has a lot of comedic moments throughout. However they can be very hit and miss. There are some truly laugh out loud hilarious moments here, but also plenty of times where the comedy falls completely flat. 

This movie does however at times too closely resemble other recent coming of age movies. Because of this there are moments that can feel all too familiar. This film also doesn't seem to know how to end its story. The last part of this film has too many potential endings and none of them quite work. For how real most of this film feels, the ending doesn't quite have the same authenticity.