Left-Handed Girl Review – Impressive Taiwanese Family Story is a Real Marvel

Few things in any culture carry as much ridiculousness and potency as its superstitions. This Taiwanese drama introduces us to I-Jing, a endearing five-year-old who has recently relocated back to Taipei with her mother and elder sibling. She gets literal firsthand experience when her grandfather scolds her for using her left hand for everything – it’s unnatural, he insists; it’s evil, he claims.

As I-Jing stares at her hand with worry, a new connection forms between her and her so-called sinister hand while she adjusts to city life. Filmed completely with iPhones, first-time director and screenwriter Shih-Ching Tsou, together with frequent collaborator Sean Baker, evokes the frenetic energy and sensory experience of Taipei. Bright red Chinese characters adorn the glass windows of a pawn shop; the cheerful tune of trash-collecting trucks fills the air; the easy ping-pong of Mandarin and Taiwanese between generations; lush trees against aged structures that nearly make you smell the unique atmosphere of a bustling, wetter city. It’s less a tribute from a fan as it is a dedication to a place known by heart. Tsou combines the vivid glimpses of the city with the complexities of flawed individuals – movingly showing what it means to be a family in Taiwan, and delivering a triumph of a film.

Family Relationships and Personal Struggles

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 set up a night market noodles stand, and the unpredictable I-Ann has left high school and works at a betel nut stall, where she’s in a relationship with her boss. I-Jing, played by the utterly delightful 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, distinguishing a good hand that does what’s required and the other that pursues what the heart desires, Tsou gracefully reflects each character’s own dualities. Here, the film delineates the complexities between what a person feels duty-bound to and what she genuinely desires: Shu-Fen can’t untangle herself from her former husband’s debts; I-Ann feels reduced to the role her mom wants her to play as she watches her peers move forward; I-Jing is told to be seen and not heard.

Cinematic Craft and Emotional Resonance

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 capturing the lively and charming rhythms of daily Taipei life. We’re eye-level with I-Jing as she makes her first theft, 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 hers alone to feel.

A sense of duty is deftly woven into each dilemma, as well as the isolation that comes with it – it’s at once personal and saddening to see how duty is often a lonely journey. 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 annoyed 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 Character Portrayals

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 left-handed in real life, expertly balances of an young girl absorbing the financial realities and unfamiliar forces – Shu-Fen’s ex, the grandma’s hijinks, 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.

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 humiliated in front of an audience. And the disclosures are powerful – by that point, it’s like uncovering a shocking, painful secret about a close companion. Tsou and Baker’s script keenly examines what it really means to lose face: which disgraces are noble, which are self-serving, and what should be handed down 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 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 November 14 and on digital services from November 28.