Left-Handed Girl sweetly channels Sean Baker without the dexterity
Baker's longtime producer Shih-Ching Tsou returns to the director's chair to tell a bittersweet tale about three generations of women in Taipei.
Photo: Netflix
Anyone will tell you how hard it is to make a living right now. Pervasive economic pressures abound, leaving what seems like everyone in the lurch. While a considerable portion of Western viewers may not understand the daily hustle inherent in running a noodle stall, one can immediately identify with the back-breaking work ethic needed to support your loved ones. Ironically, an ever-widening inequality gap has become the great equalizer. Longtime producer and debut solo filmmaker Shih-Ching Tsou transmits this truth in Left-Handed Girl, her first project as a director since she co-directed Take Out with her longtime collaborator Sean Baker back in 2004.
Tsou boarded the majority of Baker’s subsequent films as producer, among them Starlet, Tangerine, The Florida Project, and Red Rocket. It was only after the latter film that the duo pursued separate projects—Baker with the Oscar-sweeping Anora, Tsou with Left-Handed Girl. Baker’s touch is still present in Left-Handed Girl as a co-writer and editor, and a sense of Baker’s unwavering commitment to dispelling antiquated ideals regarding family, work, and “success” is channeled here, though with a thoroughly Taiwanese lens courtesy of Tsou.
The story centers on three generations of women who return to the bustling streets of Taipei after an extended stint in the countryside. Beautiful but emotionally hardened matriarch Shu-Fen (a too-subdued Janel Tsai) has moved her crop-top clad, college dropout eldest I-Ann (incredible newcomer Shih-Yuan Ma) and precocious youngster I-Jing (Nina Ye, bordering on too adorable) back to the city with the express purpose of opening a noodle stand in the city’s bustling night market.
She’d been warned from the jump that late rent will result in swift eviction, but Shu-Fen is already in trouble by the first of the following month. Much of this has to do with her financial tether to her estranged husband, whose medical condition has left her saddled with exorbitant hospital bills. I-Ann pitches in what she can from her job selling betel nuts, a natural stimulant that brings in a steady stream of clientele. Also offering support is handsome, bleach-blond Johnny (Teng-Hui Huang), who runs a merch stall next door and is clearly sweet on Shu-Fen. Another unexpected stressor is Goo Goo, a rotund little meerkat that the family inherits and becomes I-Jing’s beloved pet. Though I-Jing is often passed off to her grandparents while her mom and sister are at work, she quickly internalizes the fact that her family is in dire straits. On top of all this, her traditionally superstitious grandfather constantly derides her for having a dominant left hand, saying that “if you use your left hand, you are doing the devil’s work.”
