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‘Dìdi’ Review: Fremont-Set Sundance Movie Recalls Being the Kid Brother in an Immigrant Household
Sharing some of his most embarrassing adolescent memories from 2008, Sean Wang's likable debut plays like a scripted variation on 'Minding the Gap.'
In what feels like a cross between Bing Liu’s “Minding the Gap” and Jonah Hill’s “mid90s” — courtesy of the young director’s teenage desire to make skate videos — Wang serves up some of his most wince-inducing adolescent memories, from an aborted first kiss to the realization that he’d been trying to downplay his Taiwanese heritage. Mina nearly calls his bluff when Wang-Wang claims to love one of her favorite movies, the Nicholas Sparks weepie “A Walk to Remember.” He’s happy to let her think that he’s not like the other guys — even if “Dìdi’s” appeal has everything to do with the balance between the universal and the unique in Wang’s experience. She’s also stuck dealing with her handful of a mother-in-law, Nǎi Nai (Chang Li Hua), who joins a long line of Asian elders (like “Minari” matriarch Youn Yuh-jung) to imprint themselves on our hearts (except that here, the role is played by Wang’s real-life grandmother).
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