Shih-Ching Tsou dazzles in her solo directorial feature debut, Left-Handed Girl. The film is suffused with the colors and flow of Taipei and its night market, much like the shifting colors of the kaleidoscope held by young I-Jing (Nina Ye) in the opening frames. The screenplay is by Shih-Ching Tsou and her collaborator of many years Sean Baker, who also edited and produced the film. The two co-directed Take Out (2004), and Shih-Ching Tsou produced several of Baker’s films – Starlet (2012), Tangerine (2015), The Florida Project (2017) and Red Rocket (2021).
Coming back to the city with her mother Shu-Fen (Janel Tsai) and older sister I-Ann (Shih-Yuan Ma) after an absence of several years, I-Jing’s small family makes a new home in a cramped apartment, and the mother opens a noodle stall in the market. Shih-Yuan Ma imbues I-Ann’s character with rage and vivaciousness, anger at the father who left the family years ago, and frustration at their constrained circumstances. She finds a job of her own at a betel nut stand, where the female employees are encouraged to dress enticingly and flirt with customers. Shu-Fen is worn out from struggling to make ends meet, while 5-year-old I-Jing is left to her own devices. She delights in the market, where the sellers are all kindly to the buoyant child, especially Johnny (Brando Huang), who sells, or rather, tries to sell, a variety of small, odd, gadgets. When I-Ann picks her up from school and the two zoom through the city on her motorbike, the look on I-Jing’s face is sheer rapture.
However, the return to Taipei also reunites Shu-Fen and her daughters with the rest of the family, which is a mixed blessing. Although they are glad to see the girls, Shu-Fen’s mother and father adhere to a traditional world view that is both sexist and replete with superstition. When her grandfather, shocked to see I-Jing eating with her left hand, tells her that it is evil, the devil’s hand, she takes his statement literally, and follows it to what seems to her its natural expression, letting the “devil’s hand” do things that are forbidden, accompanied by an energetic percussive interlude.
As the drama builds and each character’s narrative arc develops, the viewer is drawn into their world, with its bright hues, intimations of peril, and the possibility of forgiveness and compassion.
France/USA/United Kingdom/2025/108 min/Mandarin with English and Hebrew subtitles
