[Film Review] Dìdi (2024) and How to Make Millions Before Grandma Dies (2024)

Two recent films revolving around the pan-Chinese culture and familial relations in a displaced environment, both mark the feature debut for its filmmakers. Sean Wong’s DÌDI (“younger brother”) is an achingly accurate portrayal of a 13-year-old ABC (America Born Chinese)’s growing pains in the noughties (the AIM era and the commencement of Facebook), while Pat Boonnitipat’s HOW TO MAKE MILLIONS BEFORE GRANDMA DIES, about a Thai-Chinese family, hailed from Chaoshan area of China's Guangdong province, is a box-office heavyweight and has so far amassed over $34 million worldwide, becoming the highest-grossing Thai film of 2024 and the eleventh-highest grossing domestic film of all time as the day of writing.

In DÌDI, Chris Wang (Izaac Wang, doing a commendable job in projecting a specific wavelength as an ethnic, precocious outsider yearning for acceptance and normalcy) goes through a transformative summer holiday in 2008 before beginning his high school days in Fremont, California. His first crush on Madi (Park) goes to skid after he gets discomfited by her more forward gestures; the friendship with his best friend Fahad (Dial) cools down after his gaffe about a dead squirrel; his budding interest in filmmaking leads him to be a filmer for three older skateboarders, just when he thinks he is among the cool kids, another inappropriate conduct (the irreverence towards his mother) puts paid to that notion.

At home, with his father being long absent (who works in Taiwan to provide for the family), his elder sister Vivian (Shirley Chen) is going to university, a rebellious Chris becomes increasingly at odds with his mother Chungsing (Joan Chen), a painter manquée who is often mercilessly berated by Chris's mollycoddling paternal grandmother (Zhang Lihua, whose unmodulated loudness and monotonousness betrays her amateurishness. Indeed she is Sean's own grandmother, treading the boards again after starring in his Oscar-nominated short NAI NAI & WAI PO, 2023, which literally means “Paternal grandmother and maternal grandmother”).

Honed with precision in its low-key lighting and era-specific ambiences (both online and offline, and the choices of songs), DÌDI seems to channel Sean Wang's own adolescent years percolated with unaccountable angst and malaise. The fickle dynamics of the day-to-day vibing with one’s friends; the fragile yet tangible puppy love that every backchannel is loaded with anticipation, excitement and trepidation; the sensitivity, apprehension and insecurity behind a faux-insouciant exteriority put on by Chris when he girds himself for a social occasion, all tactfully limned through Sean Wang's fine-grained narrative that harks back to Bo Burnham's equally sensible treatment of a teenage girl's feelings in EIGHTH GRADE (2018). Audience all around the world can find resonances in both protagonists.

However, it is the family stuff that juts out gratingly. One biggie is that we have no clue why Chris is so antagonistic towards his sister and mother (although he reconciles with both before the film ends), who are actually remarkably tolerant of Chris's hissy fits and gross pranks. By apparently ascribing it to Chris's age of rebellion, the film inadvertently casts quite a pall on parenthood and child-bearing, should every intending parent dread that to happen as if it is an inevitable process? Furthermore, since we never see anything Chungsing does in her daily existence if not with Chris, it becomes really hard for us to rally behind her when she finally turns against an overbearing mother-in-law (although Joan Chen maxes out a supernatural load of patience, kindness and empathy to a role who doesn't do her justice. Her tête-à-têtes with Chris are awash with platitudes one could almost discern her self-consciousness for articulating them), maybe she is guilty as charged, who knows? In a word, it seems too close to home for Sean Wang to pinpoint the crux of the generational frictions, something actually is of great import to Chris's coming-of-age experiences.

HTMMBGD shares the same concerns about the consanguineous disharmony and generational gap. Here the family's mother-tongue, the Chaoshan dialect, is lost on M (Assaratanakul), a college dropout and gamer, currying favor with his maternal grandma Mengju (Seamkhum), who is diagnosed with terminal cancer, in hopes of laying his hands on the inheritance of her property.

While Mengju's three children, including M's widowed mother Sew (Thomas), prefer to hide the bad tidings from Mengju, so she can live her remaining days unperturbed, it is M who spills the beans because he believes grandma has the right to know the truth and choose how to deal with it. Admirably, Mengju takes the bombshell with a philosophical resignation and allows M to live with her and minister to her, including taking her to chemotherapy and helping her with the quotidian congee-selling business. The pair's co-existence undergoes a bumpy start, but In the nature of things, a harmonious bond is in the cards. The question is, will M be triumphant? Otherwise, who will get grandma's house? Is it Kiang (Kunakorn), Mengju's eldest son, a well-to-do stockbroker with a seemingly contented family; or Sew, her only daughter who beavers away as a supermarket clerk, or Soei (Jongwilas), Mengju's youngest son, a debt-ridden layabout who seems beyond redemption.

For one thing, Mengju isn't an old fool. She isn't blind to M's intention but gladly plays along. In the meantime, by spending more and more time with Mengju, M begins to grow closer to her especially after getting wind of her past. It turns out she was the caretaker of her parents but awarded with nothing because of the deep-rooted sexism, and a blunt rejection from her own brother is a rare flareup in a film that endeavors to keep its emotional volumes in check. Which might also trigger some disgruntlement as regards Mengju's own final bequest. Nevertheless, what Boonnitipat's film eventually reveals is that her inheritance is actually judiciously allotted to tide over the one who desperately needs it and to the one who she loves most. That is as good as a parent can do to tally with the balance between favoritism and partiality.

Previously toiling in the TV sphere, whose credits including the small screen version of Nattawut Poonpiriya’s BAD GENIUS (2017), Boonnitipat conscientiously cuts his teeth in HTMMBGD, cultivating a slow-burning melodrama short of going excessively tear-jerking, and creating a specific Thai habitat for his characters, especially by accentuating the Chinese mores, like the Qingming Festival, the unique funereal traditions (taking the coffin to pass through the dead's haunts before burial) and Mengju's preoccupation with a bigger, fancier grave so she will be visited and remembered by her offspring.

Poonpiriya’s dramatis personae also do not disappoint. Assaratanakul, in his first leading film role, authenticates M’s gradual change of heart with great attention to details, never squanders a passing glance or a remark to reflect M’s none-too-deep pensées. When the chips are down - which means it is time for him to emote - he proves that he can cut it, whether it is a sudden conniption or poignant grief.

It is mostly surprising to realize Seamkhum is a brand-new discovery on the screen, a first-time actor, who carries off a demanding task to incarnate Mengju’s ordinary yet veridical personalities. She is neither a saintly grandma who is prone to cosset her grandson (a corrective of Zhang Lihua in DÌDI), nor an inveterate skinflint who is perpetually on guard against sketchy affections. Her Mengju is someone in between, and much much more. She has a toughness coarsened by her age, but also a tenderness that streams silently underneath it, which is coded in those unnoticeable moments of a hidden smile or a glint in her eyes. To say nothing of her extraordinary physical transmogrification as her physical condition worsens. That poignant scene when she is assailed by acute pain and pleads her parents to take her away makes for a tough watch even for the dry-eyed. Considering how Mengju was wronged by them, it is moderately startling to realize her subconscious resort in extremis is still the unbreakable family tie, that speaks volumes of the root of our humanity.

Supporting players are given a leeway to be less stereotyped, all three of Mengju's children are characterized as a real person embroiled with a mixed feeling towards their siblings and their family affairs. But it is Mui (Tantivejakul), M's younger cousin, whose success in securing an inheritance becomes an inspo to M, turns heads as the ambivalence between transactional acquisitiveness and genuine feelings starts to lend a more thought-provoking connotation in her case, not to mention her Onlyfans side hustle expands the film’s scope to get a quick look of a zoomer’s habitus.

By no stretch of imagination could HTMMBGD be proclaimed as a masterpiece, as Poonpiriya is still too green to shield the film from the tired paraphernalia of a rote tear-jerker, but its own earnestness shines through, while DÌDI may not lack earnestness, it certainly errs on the side of conforming to an adolescent’s fluctuating mood swings. Sean Wang is an adult now, can he see through his own past with a more clearer vision? That is the trick to pull off for a film à clef to land on its feet.

referential entries: Nattawut Poonpiriya’s BAD GENIUS (2017, 7.2/10); Lulu Wang’s THE FAREWELL (2019, 7.8/10); Bo Burnham's EIGHTH GRADE (2018, 7.1/10); Lee Isaac Chung's MINARI (2020, 7.9/10).

• Title: Dìdi

• Year: 2024

• Genre: Drama, Comedy

• Country: USA

• Language: English, Mandarin

• Director/Screenwriter: Sean Wang 王湘圣

• Music: Giosuè Greco

• Cinematography: Sam A. Davis

• Editor: Arielle Zakowski

• Cast:

• Izaac Wang 王鹿山

• Joan Chen 陈冲

• Shirley Chen 陈虹妤

• Zhang Lihua 张丽华

• Mahaela Park

• Raul Dial

• Aaron Chang

• Chiron Denk

• Sunil Maurillo

• Montay Boseman

• Georgie August

• Alaysia Simmons

• Alysha Syed

• Jayden Chiang

• Rating: 7.0/10

• English Title: How to Make Millions Before Grandma Dies

• Original Title: Lahn mah

• Year: 2024

• Genre: Comedy, Family, Drama

• Country: Thailand

• Language: Thai

• Director: Pat Boonnitipat

• Screenwriters: Pat Boonnitipat, Thodsapon Thiptinnakorn

• Music: Jaithep Raroengjai

• Cinematography: Boonyanuch Kraithong

• Editor: Thammarat Sumethsupachok

• Cast:

• Putthipong Assaratanakul

• Usha Seamkhum

• Sarinrat Thomas

• Sanya Kunakorn

• Pongsatorn Jongwilas

• Tontawan Tantivejakul

• Duangporn Oapirat

• Himawari Tajiri

• Wattana Subpakit

• Rating: 7.5/10