Left-Handed Girl (2025)

	Directed by: Shih-Ching Tsou	CHINESE TITLE Zuopiezi nuhai COUNTRY Taiwan/USA/ UK/France   GENRE Drama NORWEGIAN TITLE Left-Handed Girl RUNNING TIME 109 minutes
	Produced by: Shih-Ching Tsou Sean Baker Mike Goodridge
	Written by: Shih-Ching Tsou Sean Baker

Cast includes:
CHARACTER	ACTOR/ACTRESS	RATING
Shu-Fen	Janel Tsai
I-Ann	Ma Shih-Yuan
I-Jing	Nina Ye	½
Johnny	Brando Huang	½
Wen-Xong Chen	Akio Chen	-
Xue-Mei Wu	Xin-Yan Chao	½
A-Ming	Teng-Hung Hsia	-

Review

Much like they did with The Florida Project in 2017, the filmmaking team of Shih-Ching Tsou and Sean Baker go on location to a less affluent and less represented corner of the world to shed light on underprivileged social classes, seen from the perspective of young children. I-Jing (Nina Ye) is a 5-year-old girl moving with her mother Shu-Fen (Janel Tsai) and college-aged sister I-Ann (Ma Shih-Yuan) to Taipei, where the mother opens a noodle stand and the older sister starts working as a betel nut beauty. Their hand-to-mouth existence is strenuous and limiting, not least for little I-Jing, who must help out at the noodle stand and spend long hours on her own, though it also makes her independent and enterprising.

Much like the family depicted, Left-Handed Girl practices tough love. There are no easy routes to sentimentality or payoff. For I-Ann, her mother's love is understated; it is experienced, not communicated. And the favouritism of boys and men that permeates their society lies like a blanket over their existence. It modifies even how girls and women treat each other when there are no men or boys present. Shih-Ching Tsou's extensive knowledge of the issues she portrays reveals that this is a deeply personal project for her. The film's best accomplishment is the world it creates around its characters, which is extensive and feels lived-in. Though there are familiar narrative arcs, they are not immediately recognisable, because the characters and settings are so distinctive – and arguably also because Shih-Ching Tsou captures the child's perspective in a wonderfully vivid and imaginative manner. The most rewarding takeaway here is that for malleable 5-year-olds, things tend to work out just fine, as long as they – despite all their family's hardships – are still loved.