Poor Poor Wang Wang - A Review of Didi
If you've ever felt like an outsider, this film is for you. (That's 98% of you.)
I feel very lucky today. I got to go and see a movie that I wasn't sure I'd be able to. The movie was Didi. It's about a boy called Wang Wang and what his life was in 2008. The director, Sean Wang, had a brief segment before the movie where he explains what he was looking to accomplish. Wang wanted to make a very specific movie that everyone could connect to. He mentioned the film Stand By Me where a bunch of kids leave home together to find a dead body they heard about, and get into it with Kiefer Sutherland and his gang… or something Regardless, with Didi, the director accomplished his goal with flying colors.
I gurgled up so many old memories while watching this Asian kid make it through life. I remembered times I thought my parents were unfair, the times I broke up with my friends and vice versa, the times girls I liked broke my heart. A whole gamut of personal triumphs and terrible failures come with the territory. This film is both gorgeous and horrible. It will make you spit up your backlogged memories when you see it.
What's Didi about, exactly?
Didi is the story of a Taiwanese kid living a lower-middle-class life with his mother, his sister, and his grandmother. His father isn't around and doesn't seem to call or make plans. He's basically a non-father, so it's Wang Wang’s mother who shares space with the rest of his family. In Chinese, “didi” means "little brother" and is a term of endearment when used by one's parents. When I was growing up, everyone called me Mike-Mike. Maybe that's what made me so excited to see this film. DiDi. Mike-Mike. We're basically the same kid.
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