Few things in any culture carry as much absurdity and power as its superstitions. This Taiwanese drama introduces us to I-Jing, a sweet five-year-old who has just moved back to Taipei with her mother and elder sibling. She gets direct personal experience when her grandfather scolds her for using her left hand for everything – it’s not natural, he insists; it’s the devil at work, he claims.
As I-Jing stares at her hand with dismay, a new connection forms between her and her so-called sinister hand while she explores city life. Shot entirely with iPhones, first-time director and screenwriter Shih-Ching Tsou, together with frequent collaborator Sean Baker, captures the frenetic energy and sensory experience of Taipei. Bright red Chinese characters adorn the glass windows of a pawn shop; the cheerful tune of garbage trucks fills the air; the fluid exchange of Mandarin and Taiwanese between generations; lush trees against aged structures that nearly evoke the scent the unique atmosphere of a vibrant, wetter city. It’s not so much a love letter from a fan as it is a dedication to a place deeply familiar. Tsou combines the vivid glimpses of the city with the complexities of flawed individuals – tenderly showing what it means to be a family in Taiwan, and presenting a triumph of a film.
Family Dynamics and Inner Conflicts
The story, Taiwan’s entry for best international feature film at the Oscars, starts with I-Jing, her older sister, and her mom in a period of reconstruction. Pensive mom Shu-Fen has established a night market noodles stand, and the volatile I-Ann has left high school and works at a betel nut stall, where she’s sleeping with her boss. I-Jing, played by the very charming Nina Ye, begins a new school and, with the curiosity only a child can have, experiments with the potential of this newly labeled devil hand.
As she begins stealing trinkets at the night market with the forbidden hand, separating a good hand that does what’s required and the other that entertains what the heart desires, Tsou skillfully reflects each character’s own internal conflicts. Here, the film portrays the intricacies between what a person feels duty-bound to and what she truly wants: Shu-Fen can’t free herself from her trash ex-husband’s debts; I-Ann feels relegated to the role her mom wants her to play as she watches her peers advance; I-Jing is told to be seen and not heard.
Visual Storytelling and Emotional Depth
Tsou, along with Baker as editor and Ko-Chin Chen and Tzu-Hao Kao as cinematographers, skillfully lands us onto each family member’s separate planets, with many shots capturing the lively and charming rhythms of daily Taipei life. We’re eye-level with I-Jing as she makes her first pilfering, the adrenaline rushing with a camera shaky and beat abrupt. The camera pans overhead as I-Ann rides her scooter at night, city lights glistening in the heat, bringing an boundless feeling of freedom with a pain that’s uniquely hers to feel.
A sense of duty is deftly woven into each conundrum, as well as the loneliness that comes with it – it’s at once personal and heartbreaking to see how duty is often a solitary experience. We see it when I-Jing tries in sincerity to draw with her right hand, when I-Ann lays in bed after being mocked at an ex-classmate’s motel party. Meanwhile, Shu-Fen scrambles to make rent, her own mom irritated she needs help yet again. “A married daughter’s like water that’s poured out,” says the grandma; a son would have still been her responsibility.
Moments of Light and Performances
There are also touches of humor and playfulness, especially with the grandma’s flashes of indignation, time with a meerkat that becomes I-Jing’s pet, and I-Jing’s general joy with the world. Ye, who is a left-hander in real life, expertly balances of an innocent child absorbing the economic pressures and unknown entities – Shu-Fen’s ex, the grandma’s antics, I-Ann and Shu-Fen’s arguments – that surround her. Ma’s I-Ann, too, is a considered portrait of an acerbic teenager dealing with grief, making it feel like an inescapable but unaffordable emotion in an environment where everyone’s just trying to survive.
Final Acts and Themes
By the soap opera-like second-to-last dinner scene, the clan has nurtured big secrets that lead to the ultimate Taiwanese diu lian (losing of face): getting humiliated in front of an audience. And the disclosures are good – by that point, it’s like discovering a juicy, painful secret about a close companion. Tsou and Baker’s script keenly examines what it really means to be shamed: which disgraces are honorable, which are indulgent, and what should be handed down from one generation to the next?
Some of these revelations are left unexcavated after the big confrontation, and Left-Handed Girl may leave you wanting more – but perhaps also understanding that blowing it all up doesn’t mean resolution or a neat lesson immediately follows, or that there will be a sinister influence to blame. Instead, perhaps the city just wakes up to another day, and, a little lighter (having lost a little face), so do you.
- Release Information: Left-Handed Girl is available in certain theaters on 14 November and on streaming platforms from 28 November.
