Rarely do elements in any society carry as much ridiculousness and potency as its traditional beliefs. This Taiwanese drama introduces us to I-Jing, a sweet five-year-old who has just moved back to Taipei with her mother and older sister. She gets direct personal experience when her grandfather warns her for using her left hand for everything – it’s unnatural, he insists; it’s the devil at work, he claims.
As I-Jing stares at her hand with concern, a new connection forms between her and her so-called sinister hand while she adjusts to city life. Filmed completely with iPhones, debut solo director and screenwriter Shih-Ching Tsou, together with frequent collaborator Sean Baker, evokes the frenetic energy and sensory experience of Taipei. Vibrant crimson Chinese characters adorn the glass windows of a pawn shop; the pleasant melody of garbage trucks fills the air; the fluid exchange of Mandarin and Taiwanese between generations; lush trees against grimy buildings that nearly evoke the scent the specific essence of a bustling, wetter city. It’s not so much a love letter from a fan as it is a devotional to a place known by heart. Tsou combines the kaleidoscopic fragments of the city with the splinters of flawed individuals – tenderly showing what it means to be a family in Taiwan, and delivering a masterpiece of a film.
Family Relationships and Inner Conflicts
The drama, Taiwan’s entry for best foreign language film at the Oscars, begins 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 unpredictable I-Ann has dropped out and works at a betel nut stall, where she’s in a relationship with her boss. I-Jing, played by the very charming Nina Ye, starts a new school and, with the wonder only a child can have, experiments with the potential of this newly anointed devil hand.
As she starts pocketing trinkets at the night market with the forbidden hand, separating a right hand that does what’s required and the other that entertains what the heart desires, Tsou gracefully reflects each character’s own dualities. Here, the film portrays the complexities between what a person feels duty-bound to and what she genuinely desires: Shu-Fen can’t untangle 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 Resonance
Tsou, along with Baker as editor and Ko-Chin Chen and Tzu-Hao Kao as cinematographers, expertly lands us onto each family member’s separate planets, with many shots capturing the frisky and charming rhythms of daily Taipei life. We’re at the same height with I-Jing as she makes her first theft, 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 hers alone to feel.
A feeling of responsibility is expertly integrated into each conundrum, as well as the loneliness that comes with it – it’s at once intimate 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 scorned 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.
Lighter Moments and Performances
There are also touches of humor and fun, especially with the grandma’s bouts of anger, time with a meerkat that becomes I-Jing’s pet, and I-Jing’s general joy with the world. Ye, who is left-handed in real life, expertly walks the tightrope of an young girl absorbing the financial realities and unknown entities – Shu-Fen’s ex, the grandma’s hijinks, I-Ann and Shu-Fen’s bickering – that surround her. Ma’s I-Ann, too, is a thoughtful portrait of an sharp teenager dealing with grief, making it feel like an inescapable but unaffordable emotion in an environment where everyone’s just trying to survive.
Climactic Scenes and Central Ideas
By the dramatic penultimate dinner scene, the clan has developed big secrets that lead to the ultimate Taiwanese diu lian (losing of face): getting humiliated in front of an audience. And the revelations are powerful – by that point, it’s like discovering a juicy, painful secret about a dear friend. Tsou and Baker’s script keenly examines what it really means to lose face: which disgraces are honorable, which are indulgent, and what should be handed down from one generation to the next?
Some of these bombs are left unresolved after the big confrontation, and Left-Handed Girl may leave you dissatisfied – but perhaps also realizing that blowing it all up doesn’t mean resolution or a tidy adage 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 released in select cinemas on 14 November and on streaming platforms from November 28.
