First, Dìdi (弟弟) grabs you with nostalgia. Set in 2008, the coming-of-age story directed by Sean Wang is a vivid portrait of adolescence in the late aughts—MySpace pages and early YouTube videos, awkward flirting on AIM and at boy-girl pool parties, Paramore posters and flat-ironed side bangs. It’s like if Pen15 was set a few years later and revolved around a Taiwanese American skater boy in Fremont, California. It’s easy to get pulled back into the days just before high school, of being stupid with your friends and forming cringey crushes.
But beneath the film’s millennial appeal is the story of an immigrant mother and her American-born son struggling to understand each other. He suppresses his Asian identity to fit in and is embarrassed by her mannerisms; she pressures him to be like her friends’ studious kids, while her mother-in-law criticizes her parenting. It’s a conflict that children of immigrants are deeply familiar with: growing up and trying to find your place in the world while butting heads with your parents over generational and cultural differences. Sometimes, you’re ashamed of each other. Other times, you just want the other to accept you as you are.
“The emotional chart I wanted the script to try to follow was: This is going to start as a movie about friendship and end as a movie about family,” Wang tells ELLE.com.
In Dìdi (弟弟), that dynamic comes to life through newcomer Izaac Wang, who stars as protagonist Chris Wang, and Joan Chen, who plays his mother, Chungsing. The acclaimed Chinese actress, whose lengthy resume includes The Last Emperor and Twin Peaks, brings a soul, softness, and elegance to the part. Partly inspired by Sean Wang’s own mother, Chungsing isn’t a tiger mom, but she wants the best for Chris and his older sister, Vivian (Shirley Chen). She nags Chris about SAT prep but also cracks fart jokes with him in the car, and she quietly dreams of being an artist. As a mother herself, Chen connected to the film on a personal level. The result is a heartfelt performance that’s resonating everywhere. Dìdi (弟弟) won the audience award at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year and, at the time of writing, has a 96-percent score on Rotten Tomatoes. Crowds and critics love it, and it’s easy to see why.
Here, Joan Chen and Sean Wang speak to ELLE.com about working on Dìdi (弟弟), mother-son bonds, and working with Wang’s real-life grandmother, who makes her acting debut in the film.
This is a coming-of-age film, but I also love the mother-son relationship, especially since it involves an immigrant mother and a first-generation kid. Could you tell me a little bit more about crafting that relationship between Chungsing and Chris?
Sean Wang: I think it was really inspired by the relationship I had with my mom. That relationship is so full of love, but it is fraught and complicated and turbulent, especially during that time in my life. When I think of coming-of-age movies typically, I really do think of friendship. I don’t typically think of mother-son or parent-child relationships. In terms of writing and crafting the movie, it really started as a movie about friendship and adolescent boyhood. Halfway through writing it, I just really felt this desire to write about my family and, again, go back to the relationship I had with my mom.
Once I decided to go down that rabbit hole, just to see how it would feel and follow that urge, the movie came alive for the first time, and I was like, “Oh, that’s what this is. It’s a mother-son relationship. It’s a love letter to immigrant moms, but it’s hidden in the trappings of a coming-of-age movie like Stand by Me.”
Izaac Wang as Chris, Chang Li Hua as Nǎi Nai, and Joan Chen as Chungsing in Dìdi.
Joan, you’re a veteran actress and a filmmaker as well. Was there anything about this mother-son relationship or Sean’s vision that really drew you in?
Joan Chen: Yeah, very, very much so, because I am an immigrant mother who brought up two American children, who also had a very turbulent adolescence and experienced so much drama. I think ultimately it’s the same, all the fights that we had was really because of misunderstanding, not only the generational gap, but also the cultural chasm of being an immigrant mother who really doesn’t understand how to bring up American children.
The first year I sent my older child to kindergarten, I went to pick her up the first day after Thanksgiving break, and I got a talking-to by the principal, because we didn’t have turkey, and we didn’t have a traditional celebration. When they were asking about it, my daughter said, “No, we don’t celebrate Thanksgiving.” Something that meant nothing to me at all, I realized that it must mean something to my children, and I must do this. That’s just a tiny little example of something that may not mean anything to me, that would mean the world to them. And also, something may mean a lot to me, but would have no relevance in their lives.
You’re always a little unsure. That was explored in the film very well. And also, the relationship between me and the mother-in-law, that’s also a very specifically Chinese thing. We do have three generations living together, and that relationship is always kind of fraught with different expectations and dissatisfaction.
I love the character, because she is struggling and stuck in between being a bad daughter-in-law and trying so hard to be a good mother, but oftentimes feeling like she’s failing. I relate to all of that. And I love the fact that, in the end, people do see there is so much love in the family.
Sometimes it’s the little things that your parents don’t get that become such big memories for you when you’re a kid. And then you grow up you and realize.
Chen: I ruined Santa Claus when she was 5, and I was trying to resurrect it so hard afterwards. I said, “Well, why do you think this is all Santa Claus? Your parents love you.” That one was really traumatic for her. There are so many things that I got wrong and didn’t know, with the best of intentions.
As a mother, Joan Chen related to her character, Chungsing: “There are so many things that I got wrong and didn’t know, with the best of intentions.”
I read in the press notes that you spent some time with Sean’s actual mother for research.
Chen: Sean’s mom was on set every day. After I got the script, I really wanted to see how she would say these lines. I had Sean’s mom record these lines for me. It’s not like I’m going to imitate her. But I just wanted to know that particular voice, that attitude. It is different from how I would originally deliver the lines, so I could incorporate it. I don’t necessarily have to, but it is fun to somehow channel someone else’s motherhood into this role. We talked every day, talked about our kids, talked about motherhood, talked about immigrant experiences.
And Sean, what was it like having the Joan Chen channeling your mother?
Wang: It was really special. One of the things I really loved about being a director is…seeing the cast and all these different departments and people form their own relationship, separate from the relationship I have with them as a director, and I think it was similar with Joan and my mom. In prep, I recorded my mom’s dialogue, sent it to her. I had interviews that I conducted with my mom.
Chen: That’s right.
Wang: Again, it was never prescriptive. It wasn’t like, “This is my mom. Be like her.” It was just, “Hey, do what you will with this information.” In that sense, I was trying to facilitate some sort of research, and I wrote backstories. But again, I had that same experience. I read the press notes, and I was like, “Oh, I didn’t even know Joan and my mom were hanging out. I was directing the movie.” I think my mom is very empathetic, and I’m sure she shared things with Joan that I don’t even know. That time that they spent together I’m sure informed a lot of the character.
Izaac Wang (Chris) and Sean Wang on set.
What’s also interesting is that Chris’ family is a matriarchy, not only because of his mom, but also because of his grandmother and his older sister, Vivian. Obviously, the father is working abroad as the breadwinner, but he’s never onscreen. So I thought it was interesting to see him in this household run by women. So what was it like crafting those relationships? Was it also mirroring your family?
Sean: In a sense, yeah. My dad wasn’t stationed in Taiwan by any means, but he was on business trips a lot. The truth of it was that I felt like my mom was the one who was forced to deal with me and my sister’s teenage angst. My grandma was in the house too, so it did feel like the influences that really shaped me as a kid were my sister, my mom, my grandma.
I think there was something about that trope that I wanted to try and subvert. I think oftentimes in movies like this, you see the little brother trying to be his big brother, and he goes into his room, like, “What is my big brother doing?” But in this sense, you have an older sister. So Chris goes into his sister’s room and is trying on her Hot Topic pants.
It just felt like there was something there to also tie back into what the lack of a male figure in your life does to you as a 13-year-old boy. You’re raised by women, and then you go out into the world, and it is a very testosterone-fueled culture. From a creative story standpoint, it felt like, “Can we create a character that is never seen or heard but felt throughout the entire movie?” It was a creative challenge.
I also wanted to ask you both what it was like working with Sean’s grandmother. She’s such a star.
Chen: She does have a very special presence. Obviously, when I first heard that, I was a little concerned. She’s 87 now, so she was 86 [during the shoot]. For an 86-year-old to be a first-time actor, I was a little concerned. But she memorized her lines. She really worked hard. We rehearsed the lines, and all of a sudden, I just felt it’s all going to be okay.
I’m actually grateful that somehow that brings me something new to work with. You want to then strip away any trace of being an actress and just be genuine. That relationship felt more memorable and more unique, because she is Sean’s grandmother and not a movie actress.
Izaac Wang as Chris Wang, Chang Li Hua as Nǎi Nai, Joan Chen as Chungsing Wang, and Shirley Chen as Vivian Wang in Dìdi.
Wang: When we did the short with my two grandmothers [Nǎi Nai & Wài Pó, Wang’s 2023 documentary short], both of them are incredible. I think Nǎi Nai was too old to actually entertain playing the role, but Wài Pó is the age of the role as scripted. She does have that quality that Joan was saying. There are scenes in Nǎi Nai & Wài Pó where her eyes are just so soulful, and they give you emotion.
Nǎi Nai’s character is an antagonistic force, she is this overbearing weight over Chungsing’s shoulder, but ultimately, I needed her to be a character that the audience fell in love with. I think Wài Pó is impossible to hate, so charming. And all the things that she’s saying and doing in the film that are seen as antagonizing, they come from a place of love.
Over the course of a couple years, I was joking with Wài Pó, like, “Hey, you’re going to play the grandma in our movie, right?” And she kept saying, “No, no, you’re funny, you’re funny. We can do the documentary, but I’m not an actress.”
Eventually, once we really got in the weeds of casting, we did talk to professional actresses, but it was kind of like, “If we’re going to cast a non-actor, I’m not going to go cast someone else’s grandma.”
She’s right there!
Wang: I was always thinking with this movie, “What can we do that’s unique to this movie, that no other movie can do?” Because I think when you’re working in a genre that’s very over-saturated, hopefully, in the process of making it, you can find something different and unique, and that’ll make the movie feel fresh.
With my grandma, it was like, “Oh man, this is a swing, and if it doesn’t work, it will ruin the movie. It will be such a disaster. But if it works, it would be a home run. I just know.”
Chen: It was magical.
What did your mom say when she saw the movie?
Wang: She loved it. She was at Sundance, and I think she was very moved. Again, she was part of the process. She saw the script, she read the script, she gave notes, she informed the character. She was a really part of the process. She listened to a lot of music cues while I was in post…So she watched the movie, and there’s a dedication to her at the end credits. She didn’t know that was going to be there. I think seeing that in a theater full of moviegoers for the first time, with me there, with her entire family, I think she was very proud, very moved.
This interview was edited and condensed for clarity. Dìdi (弟弟) is now playing in theaters.
Erica Gonzales is the Senior Culture Editor at ELLE.com, where she oversees coverage on TV, movies, music, books, and more. She was previously an editor at HarpersBAZAAR.com. There is a 75 percent chance she’s listening to Lorde right now.