It should be no surprise that Shih-Ching Tsou’s Left-Handed Girl, which she co-wrote with Sean Baker, has the same energetic ebullience and aching empathy as Baker’s movies: Tangerine, Florida Project, Red Rocket, Anora. It’s also grounded in the same social realism, which again, is no surprise; Baker and Tsou have been collaborating for over 20 years. But whereas Baker’s movies explore Americana, Left-Handed Girl is the story of a plucky family moving to Taipei, the cramped bustling capital of Taiwan to escape…something. What seems at first like an Asian Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore turns out to be so much more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
The first impression is that the taciturn mother is fleeing some indeterminate abuse, or at least neglect. She has in tow her surly teenage daughter and precocious five-year-old left-handed girl. They are returning to Taipei and their extended family, including a grandmother and grandfather, and a bevy of aunts (the family’s only boy is away on business). Our three ladies move into a closet-sized apartment and open a noodle stand in Taipei’s night market. They then struggle to get by, to fit in, to make sense of the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But unlike Martin Scorsese’s landmark woman’s liberation film, Left-Handed Girl is mostly told from the perspective of the children. The title comes from an old superstition that the left hand is evil. The grandfather reprimands the five-year-old for using her left hand, angrily moving the crayon to her right hand. He insists that the left hand does the work of the devil. Naturally, this will do things to a kid’s mind, and this is the script’s device to introduce the theme of moral responsibility for the choices we make. The character’s choices, many of them made before the movie started, ripple outward in unexpected ways. They come to a head in a carefully orchestrated set piece I didn’t expect in a movie like this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Taiwanese setting gives Tsou the opportunity to explore the trappings of China’s male-centric culture, only a few generations removed from foot binding, haunted by unwanted female babies. Here is a social structure with very different expectations and privileges for men. But there’s nothing heavy-handed about Left-Handed Girl; it explores its setting and themes without the rancor or didactic simplicity you might associate with traditional “chick films”. Its cultural specificity and keenly observed female perspective don’t compromise the universality of Left-Handed Girl’s story about a mother and how her children understand her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Like some of Baker’s movies, Left-Handed Girl was shot with iPhones, which give its social realism the sheen of verite. The iPhones also make the night market in Taipei glow rather than twinkle or flash. They soften its lurid pinball-machine aesthetic, make it feel immediate and even intimate, like a local street fair rather than an exotic locale in a videogame.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But what’s most remarkable about Left-Handed Girl is how watchable and warmly humanitarian it is, buoyed by three amazing performances. I recently watched Mike Leigh’s latest movie, Hard Truths, which is singularly unpleasant, at turns morose and chafing. Social realism can be tough to swallow. But Tsou deftly channels Sean Baker’s light touch, navigating the ups and downs and further downs of social realism with affection and humor. And just as Anora was very nearly a raucous French farce, Left-Handed Girl ends up being a joyous reminder that although times can be tough and circumstances even tougher, people are wonderful, beautiful, resilient things, and lovely to behold.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It should be no surprise that Shih-Ching Tsou’s Left-Handed Girl, which she co-wrote with Sean Baker, has the same energetic ebullience and aching empathy as Baker’s movies: Tangerine, Florida Project, Red Rocket, Anora. It’s also grounded in the same social realism, which again, is no surprise; Baker and Tsou have been collaborating for over 20 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":53481,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-53480","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-movies"],"yoast_head":"\n