Sundance review: "Dìdi (弟弟)" is a coming-of-age story that zeroes in on the director's own teen years, and hits the hard universal truths of growing up

Good coming-of-age stories — and writer-director Sean Wang’s Dìdi (弟弟) is a good one — are notable for two things: They are specific to their time and place, and they say something more universal about the pain of growing up.

The time and place for Wang’s semi-autobiographical story is Fremont, Calif., in 2008. It centers on Chris Wang (played by newcomer Isaac Wang), who, like the director then, is a 13-year-old kid of Taiwanese parents. His mom (Joan Chen, who’s wonderful here) works to make a good home, and spends her spare time painting. His dad is never seen, working back in Taiwan and sending money to the family — though Dad’s mother, Nai Nai (played by the director’s grandmother, Chang Li Hua), is there to remind Mom of her shortcomings. The fourth member of the household is Vivian (Shirley Chen), Chris’ older sister, who constantly argues with Chris, but is soon leaving for college at UC-San Diego.

Chris spends this summer before his freshman year of high school hanging out with his buddies, as they pull pranks and shoot video of the results for Chris’ YouTube feed. Chris — known to his buddies as “WangWang” — also pines for a girl in his class, Madi (Mahaela Park), and is thrilled when she asks him to request they be Facebook friends.

Some of Wang’s story details the many different ways Chris is mortified by his mother’s traditional Taiwanese ways — like how she eats a Big Mac by separating the layers and cutting bits off with a knife an a fork. It also shows Chris’ first faltering steps as a filmmaker, when he helps some older teens shoot video of their skateboard tricks.

What makes “Dìdi (弟弟)” so entertaining, and so relatable, is how the specificity of Wang’s adolescent memories — things that could only have happened to him as a Taiwanese American kid in this era — aren’t that far off from what everybody dealt with as a 13-year-old: Being mortified by your parents, fed up with your siblings, eager to learn about the opposite sex but terrified about how to do it, and bottling up rage with no good place to put it. Wang’s childhood looks nothing like mine or anybody else’s, but in the broader sense, it looks exactly like mine and everybody else’s.

——

Dìdi (弟弟)

★★★1/2

Screening in the U.S. Dramatic competition of the 2024 Sundance Film Festival. Not rated, but probably R for some sexual content, mild violence, language and drug use involving teens. Running time: 91 minutes; in English and in Mandarin with subtitles.

Screens again: Saturday, January 20, 5 p.m., Redstone Cinemas 1, Park City; Sunday, January 21, 1:45 p.m., Broadway Centre Cinemas 6, Salt Lake City; Tuesday, January 23, 5:15 p.m., Library Center Theatre, Park City; Friday, January 26, 6:45 p.m., Redstone Cinemas 7, Park City. Also available online via the Sundance portal, Thursday-Sunday, January 25-28.