Ned Flanders would quickly go bust at the Taipei night market.
Left-handedness, so I’ve learned from some cursory googling after watching Shih-Ching Tsou’s splendid and glowing solo feature debut Left-Handed Girl, is stigmatized by the old guard in Taiwan. When the adorable moppet I-Jing (Nina Ye) is caught eating lefty at a family dinner, her grumpy grandpa (Akio Chen) warns her not to favor “the Devil’s hand.” The silly remark lands hard with I-Jing, one of several examples in this sharply tuned film reminding us how children can sometimes focus on something most adults would find inconsequential, while unaware of larger issues around them.
And I-Jing is indeed in the middle of a brewing drama. She, her older half sister I-Ann (Shih-Yua Ma), and mother Chu-Fen (Janel Tsai) have just returned to Taipei. From where they’ve come (and why) is unclear, but this is a family where a lot of tales are left untold. As Chu-Fen gets settled running a noodle stand at the night market (and I-Ann takes a job preparing and selling betel nuts), we learn that I-Ann’s father is on his deathbed. All we know about him is that he was very much out of the picture, and he isn’t I-Jing’s father. Still, Chu-Fen feels obliged to take care of his hospital and funeral expenses.
This causes some familial strain, especially with I-Jing’s grandmother (Xin-Yan Chao), an ebullient woman who is also involved (in some never-quite-detailed capacity) with passport forgery and a little light smuggling.
The specifics to much of Left-Handed Girl, on limited release from Nov. 14 and streaming on Netflix from Nov. 28, are left intentionally hazy not just because we’re watching it all from I-Jing’s point of view, but also due to the supersonic editing of Tsou’s longtime associate Sean Baker, who is also the co-screenwriter and a co-producer. Tsou has worn many hats on several previous Baker productions, from co-producing to costume designing to making brief onscreen appearances. Most notably, though, they co-directed Baker’s second project, 2004’s Take Out, which focused on a frenzied day in the life of a Chinese food delivery guy in New York City.
While Left-Handed Girl exploits the neon-lit night market and Taipei streets in ways reminiscent to the strip clubs and boardwalks of Anora, the overall tone is most reminiscent of The Florida Project, which also starred a staggeringly adorable 6-year-old girl.
And one can not really overemphasize just how much the camera loves young Nina Ye. The film clocks in at 108 minutes, but had they tacked on another half hour of her sitting with a big grin on her sister’s scooter zipping around the city, I doubt anyone would mind. A lot of this movie is just watching her do stuff like play arcade games, eat noodles, play with her pet meerkat, and look at a fish tank and say “fish have no wisdom.” This is—and I cannot emphasize this enough—a bestowal of righteousness upon the world. It’s entirely possible that Ye will grow to become a fine actress. But she will be this cute only once, and the lightning has been sufficiently caught and captured in this marvelous bottle.
Luckily, there’s also a story happening, in addition to watching a preternaturally cute kid romp around a flamboyantly-lit city. The gurgling intergenerational tensions come to a head during grandma’s big 60th birthday bash, and there are some good twists in there that somehow I didn’t see coming. That’s because I was far too focused on the explosive joy that filled every moment of I-Jing’s growth to recognize the unsavory aspects of life. That’s the sleight-of-hand that makes Left-Handed Girl so incredible.
