"Left-Handed Girl" is a Chinese language drama set in Taipei, about a little girl named I-Jing (Nina Ye) with a complicated, tumultuous family. Her mother Shu-Fen (Janey Tsai) and adult sister I-Ann (Shih-Yuan Ma) don't get along, for reasons that aren't clear to I-Jing. Her mother runs a noodle stall in the night market, while her sister works for a betel nut vendor, and there's never much money despite all their efforts. Sean Baker co-wrote and co-produced this film, but is taking a backseat to his long-time collaborator Shih-Ching Tsou, who directed, co-produced, and co-wrote it.
Through I-Jing's eyes, Taiwan is a buzzy hive of perpetual activity. Her family may be poor, but she's happy. She makes friends with fellow merchant Johnny (Brando Huang), goes to school by day, and plays in the market by night. She reconnects with her mother's parents (Akio Chen and Xin-Yan Chao), who are constantly fretting over their daughter's life choices. It's from her grandfather that I-Jing learns that her left hand is her "devil hand," and I-Jing's attempts to stop using it only seem to cause it to act out and cause trouble. Or maybe it's because Shu-Fen and I-Ann's troubles can't help but spill over into her life, no matter how much they try to keep things from her.
It's the cultural specificity that makes "Left-Handed Girl" feel like such a distinct creation from the Sean Baker oeuvre, even though it's using many of the same guerilla filmmaking techniques and character types. Tsou's vision of Taiwan is a familiar one for me, not just because of the iPhone cinematography, or the child's-eye first person views previously seen in "The Florida Project," but because it captures many sides of Taipei that I'm well acquainted with. The grandparents' apartment looks like my grandparents' apartment. The city streets teeming with scooters, the endless night market, the restaurants, the clubs, the shops, and above all else the people are all exactly as I remember them. A visit with the extended family means a constant stream of bickering, gossip, nostalgia, and rehashing of old grievances. Little I-Jing can't help but be affected by all the money troubles, bad relationships, and family secrets.
Mother-daughter relationships are at the crux of the film, specifically the antagonism, guilt, and frustrations that come with having to depend on one another during hard times. As the films goes on, we learn a lot about Shu-Fen and I-Ann, who have both been through many difficulties in their personal lives. The family is moving back to Taipei after an absence of several years, which forces them to confront parts of their past that they're not ready to deal with. There are also several glaring absences - the most prominent being Shu-Fen's husband, who abandoned the family years ago and saddled them with debt. Everyone keeps trying to treat the emotional fallout like it's a thing of the past, but the situation is very much ongoing, and ignoring it has consequences.
The only thing that didn't ring true to me is that the melodrama gets to be a bit much, with several storylines converging at the end in a very messy, public way. Having the specifics of the family situation unexplained worked much better for me in the early parts of the film, and the big reveals came off as forced and unnecessary. Still, I liked all of the performers, and got very invested in the characters' lives. I appreciate Tsou's efforts to humanize everyone, even I-Ann's scummy boss A-Ming (Teng-Hung Hsia), who is shown to have his own complicated family life. The overall tenor of the film is heartwarming, humane, and optimistic, even though everyone is still hustling and struggling in the end.
"Left-Handed Girl" is the first feature where Shih-Ching Tsou has a sole directing credit, and it comes two decades after "Take Out," her first feature that she co-directed with Sean Baker. From what I've read about the film's history, "Left-Handed Girl" faced an uphill battle at just about every stage of its creation, and the fact that it got made at all is a minor miracle. Even if the movie is imperfect and too much at times, I'm happy to report that it was well worth the trouble.
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