Few things in any culture carry as much ridiculousness and power as its superstitions. This Taiwanese drama introduces us to I-Jing, a sweet five-year-old who has recently relocated 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 not natural, he insists; it’s evil, he claims.
As I-Jing examines her limb with concern, a new connection forms between her and her so-called devil hand while she navigates city life. Filmed completely with iPhones, debut solo director and screenwriter Shih-Ching Tsou, together with frequent collaborator Sean Baker, summons the frenetic energy and sensory immersion of Taipei. Vibrant crimson Chinese characters overtake the glass windows of a pawn shop; the pleasant melody of trash-collecting trucks fills the air; the easy ping-pong of Mandarin and Taiwanese between generations; lush trees against aged structures that nearly evoke the scent the unique atmosphere of a vibrant, humid city. It’s not so much a love letter from a fan as it is a devotional to a place deeply familiar. Tsou combines the kaleidoscopic fragments of the city with the splinters of imperfect people – movingly showing what it means to be a family in Taiwan, and delivering a masterpiece 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 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, begins 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 expected and the other that entertains what the heart desires, Tsou gracefully reflects each character’s own internal conflicts. Here, the film delineates the intricacies between what a person feels obligated to and what she genuinely desires: Shu-Fen can’t free herself from her trash ex-husband’s debts; I-Ann feels reduced 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 places us onto each family member’s separate planets, with many shots recording the lively and charming rhythms of daily Taipei life. We’re eye-level with I-Jing as she makes her first pilfering, the excitement building with a camera unsteady and beat staccato. The camera pans overhead as I-Ann rides her scooter at night, city lights shimmering in the heat, bringing an boundless feeling of freedom with a pain that’s uniquely hers to feel.
A feeling of responsibility is expertly integrated into each dilemma, 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 earnest to draw with her right hand, when I-Ann rests in bed after being scorned at an ex-classmate’s motel party. Meanwhile, Shu-Fen struggles 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 delight with the world. Ye, who is a left-hander in real life, perfectly balances of an young girl absorbing the economic pressures and unfamiliar forces – 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 acerbic teenager dealing with grief, making it feel like an inescapable but prohibitive emotion in an environment where everyone’s just trying to survive.
Climactic Scenes and Central Ideas
By the soap opera-like penultimate dinner scene, the clan has developed big secrets that lead to the ultimate Taiwanese diu lian (losing of face): getting embarrassed in front of an audience. And the disclosures are good – by that point, it’s like uncovering a shocking, painful secret about a dear friend. Tsou and Baker’s script keenly examines what it really means to be shamed: which shames are honorable, which are self-serving, and what should be passed from one generation to the next?
Some of these bombs are left unexcavated after the big showdown, and Left-Handed Girl may leave you dissatisfied – but perhaps also realizing that airing everything doesn’t mean closure or a tidy adage immediately follows, or that there will be a devil’s hand 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 certain theaters on November 14 and on streaming platforms from 28 November.
