Rarely do elements in any culture carry as much ridiculousness and potency 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 admonishes her for using her left hand for everything – it’s unnatural, he insists; it’s the devil at work, he claims.
As I-Jing examines her appendage with concern, a new relationship forms between her and her so-called devil hand while she adjusts to city life. Filmed completely with iPhones, first-time director and co-writer Shih-Ching Tsou, along with frequent collaborator Sean Baker, captures the frenetic energy and sensory experience of Taipei. Vibrant crimson Chinese characters overtake the glass windows of a pawn shop; the cheerful tune of trash-collecting trucks fills the air; the fluid exchange of Mandarin and Taiwanese between generations; lush trees against aged structures that nearly make you smell the unique atmosphere of a vibrant, wetter city. It’s less a tribute 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 – poignantly showing what it means to be a family in Taiwan, and presenting a masterpiece of a film.
Family Dynamics and Personal Struggles
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. Thoughtful 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 sleeping 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 begins stealing trinkets at the night market with the cursed limb, distinguishing a good 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 delineates the complexities between what a person feels obligated to and what she genuinely desires: Shu-Fen can’t untangle herself from her former husband’s debts; I-Ann feels relegated 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, expertly places us onto each family member’s individual worlds, with many shots recording the lively and delightful rhythms of daily Taipei life. We’re at the same height with I-Jing as she makes her first pilfering, the adrenaline rushing with a camera unsteady and beat abrupt. The camera sweeps above as I-Ann rides her scooter at night, city lights shimmering in the heat, bringing an expansive feeling of freedom with a pain that’s hers alone to feel.
A sense of duty 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 earnest to draw with her right hand, when I-Ann lays in bed after being mocked 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.
Moments of Light and Performances
There are also moments of levity and playfulness, especially with the grandma’s flashes of indignation, 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 walks the tightrope of an young girl absorbing the financial realities and unfamiliar forces – Shu-Fen’s ex, the grandma’s antics, 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 dramatic penultimate dinner scene, the clan has nurtured big secrets that lead to the ultimate Taiwanese diu lian (losing of face): getting humiliated in front of an audience. And the disclosures are good – 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 shames are honorable, which are indulgent, and what should be handed down from one generation to the next?
Some of these revelations are left unresolved after the big confrontation, and Left-Handed Girl may leave you wanting more – but perhaps also understanding that blowing it all up doesn’t mean resolution 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 digital services from November 28.
