To start with, “didi” is a Chinese term — roughly translated, it means “little brother”. Hence Didi, the semi-autobiographical picture from writer/director Sean Wang, here making his feature debut after a short but respectable tenure in documentaries and music videos. And due to the autobiographical nature of the movie, it bears mentioning that Wang is a Taiwanese American who came of age in Fremont, CA, which is where this film was shot.

We lay our scene in the summer of 2008. The world is gradually adapting to social media, casual homophobia is still lingering in the acceptable mainstream, “cancel culture” isn’t a thing yet, and Chris Wang (played by Izaac Wang) is starting high school in a few short months. So, Chris is caught in between middle school and high school. And he’s a kid with Taiwanese heritage and American upbringing, so he’s trying to balance that as well.

(Side note: If there’s any relation between Sean Wang and Izaac Wang, I can’t find any sign of it.)

The upshot is that Chris has no idea who or what he really is. He lashes out and acts like an angry little shit, but that’s mostly because it’s the only proven way he gets any attention. He’s a bundle of emotions and energy and hormones, and his only real outlet for all of that is to do stupid shit with his friends and upload the recordings onto YouTube.

The problem is that Chris doesn’t seem to know any other way of connecting with people. His friends all love him when he’s filming their stunts for YouTube, but nobody wants him talking about those same stunts in mixed company. His friends can all tell off-color jokes and use diminutive nicknames, but he can’t use those same jokes and nicknames in the same way.

With all due respect to Chris’ prodigious skill with a camera, Chris’ greatest talent — maybe even his only real talent — is bullshit. Chris has a preternatural skill with code-switching, telling people whatever they want to hear and lying well enough to fool himself. Alas, the downside is that pretty much everything about Chris is a lie and even he doesn’t know who or what he really is.

What’s even worse is that all of Chris’ friends are phony puffed-up ignorant shits just like he is. He spends one half of the movie with horny idiot pre-teens all trying comically hard to act like they know all about sex and drugs and whatnot. And then Chris spends the other half of the movie with older teens who really know about sex and drugs, which makes them considerably more dangerous in their own way.

And right there in between is Chris’ crush (Madi, played by Mahaela Park), who may or may not have a mutual romantic/sexual attraction with Chris. How far are one or both of them willing or able to go? Are either or both of them lying to themselves or each other? How badly could either of them hurt each other? Kudos to the filmmakers for playing all this out in a tasteful and surprising way.

Oh, and by the way, this isn’t even a matter of Asian/white color clash. Pretty much all of Chris’ dumb little buddies are BIPOC. That’s a pretty neat way of highlighting that Chris’ conflict is with American culture and the messy nature of adolescence, rather than with any particular race.

Then there’s the matter of Chris’ family. Chris’ older sister (Vivian, played by Shirley Chen) is just about to move away for freshman year of college. Chris’ mother (played by Joan Chen) is struggling to manage the house while trying and failing to make any headway as an artist. We never meet or hear from Chris’ estranged father, who’s out making money back in Taiwan. But we do meet Chris’ paternal grandmother (played by Zhang Li Hua, the director’s actual grandmother), who’s pretty much only there to be the voice of Old Taiwan and scold the rest of the family about how nobody would be having any problems if they acted more like families were expected to act back in the old country.

(Side note: Yes, I’m aware that Taiwan’s status as a part of China is quite literally a subject of incendiary debate. But the film seems to use the two interchangeably, so that’s what I’m going with here. If I’m wrong and unintentionally insensitive about this matter, I offer my apologies.)

The relationship between Chris and his mother is a fraught one. It’s tricky because his mother still has a vested interest in maintaining relations with other Chinese immigrant mothers. In other words, there’s a cultural pressure on her — and thus on Chris — to look and act like the Model Minority who’s successful and well-behaved and so on. To be clear, Chris’ mother dearly and unconditionally loves her son and she’s trying her hardest to communicate on his terms. But the generational gap and the cultural gap means that it takes her a good long while to get there.

It certainly doesn’t help that Chris’ mom is code-switching and lying to herself and others just like Chris does on a regular basis. Chris himself is too self-absorbed and inexperienced to see the tortured identity beneath all the performative white lies, but it’s definitely there. It’s most especially obvious in a shouting match between his mom and grandmother, which is in turn echoed in a later shouting match between Chris and his mother.

Probably the strongest relationship in this movie is between Chris and Vivian, who loves Chris unconditionally like nobody else in the cast. Yes, the two of them have a strong sibling rivalry going on, with the both of them pulling cruel childish pranks on each other in between shouting matches. Even so, that doesn’t stop Vivian from coming in clutch for didi every single time it matters.

It’s easy to forget that Vivian understands better than anyone what Chris is going through. After all, she would’ve gone through all this shit in the exact same schools and neighborhoods with the exact same family not very long ago. She’s ideally placed to be the role model and confidant that Chris so desperately needs. Unfortunately, the both of them are so short-sighted and stubborn, too immature for that kind of introspection, too embarrassed at their own childish mistakes, that neither one of them sees it until Vivian’s practically on her way to college and out of the movie. Then again, Chris’ mom was around for Vivian’s rough adolescence as well, and that lived experience proves to be quite valuable when the characters finally remember it and find the guts to address it.

Of course, it doesn’t help that for Vivian and her mother both, nagging is a love language. The both of them are sadly incapable of asking about Chris’ friends and where he’s going and what he’s doing — those questions always sound like interrogations, rather than sincere efforts at making a connection. Or maybe it’s a mix of both, it’s sadly hard to tell.

Of all the many, many coming-of-age films we’ve had in recent memory, Didi is definitely in the upper echelon. I don’t know if this is better than Ezra — I’ll have to pick one or the other at the end of the year, and that’s a tough decision I am not looking forward to. On a broader timeline, I’d still say Love, Simon is the superior movie — that one had style and energy and plot momentum like this one doesn’t.

Didi is slower and more introspective in nature — certainly understandable, as this is the product of a filmmaker unpacking his own childhood — but that makes it such a deep and layered movie.

Everything about this movie feels well-loved and lived-in. The characters are all developed in fascinating ways, and with impressive depth. The coming-of-age narrative is so heartfelt and expertly crafted that the themes of immigrant life are conveyed with effortless grace. Sure, the 90-minute runtime feels much longer, but that speaks to how much is packed into every second.

This is definitely a movie well worth checking out.