Left-Handed Girl Review: Sean Baker Collaborator Shin Ching-Tsou's Debut Is An Honest, Darling Challenge Of Patriarchal Norms

There’s an incandescent sweetness to Left-Handed Girl, the solo directorial debut from long-time Sean Baker collaborator Shin Ching-Tsou. Co-written and edited by him, the film is nonetheless distinctively Ching-Tsou’s, a romantically funny rebuke of patriarchal conventions and Taiwanese traditionalism. Centering on three generations of women with the especially precocious five-year-old I-Jing (Nina Yeh) as its focal point, Left-Handed Girl quietly challenges entrenched societal norms.

I-Jing is the left-handed girl in question, an impossibly cherubic-faced ball of energy who seems blissfully unaware of the struggles around her. The family has relocated to Taipei where her battle-weary mother, Shu-Fen (Janel Tsai), plans to open a night market noodle stand. I-Jing’s older sister, I-Ann (Ma Shih-yuan), a brusque teenager with little to no patience for anyone around her, procures a job at a betel nut stand that also traffics in cigarettes and occasional sex work (it is a Baker film, after all).

Though mention is made of I-Ann’s exceptional high school grades, she is also a dropout for reasons as yet unknown, and the three women are in dire financial straits. It is implied that Shu-Fen’s ex-husband was abusive and a thief, and though the two are separated, she insists on visiting him at the hospital where he is slowly dying of emphysema, and subsequently paying for his astronomical funeral costs. Between that, the meager earnings from her stand and I-Ann’s questionable discipline as an employee, things are not looking promising.

The lone bright spot in lugubrious Shu-Fen’s life is the neighboring stall owner, Johnny (Brando Huang), who sweetly dotes on the girls. He seems like something of a good-natured snake-oil salesman, with a mobile amplification device permanently strung around his head so that he can hawk dubious wares like a “magic sponge” which can tackle any possible clean-up situation. I-Ann, meanwhile, subjects herself to an unfeeling sexual relationship with her lazy boss (Hsia Teng Hung).

As for I-Jing, things seem gloriously innocent, especially as the family inherits an adorable meerkat pet they name GooGoo. But one day, she is left alone with her conservative grandfather (Akio Chen), who berates her for using her “devil hand,” aka the left hand, and insists that she never use it around him. Taking this literally, I-Jing begins shoplifting with her devil hand and, later, causes a devastating accident. Meanwhile, Shu-Fen’s narcissistic mother (Xin-Yan Chao) busies herself with a lucrative, highly illegal activity which threatens to implicate everyone.

Left-Handed Girl Continues Baker & Ching-Tsou’s Quest For Verisimilitude

Left-Handed Girl is, like Tangerine, shot exclusively on an iPhone. Where it gave the latter film a certain verisimilitude (compounded by its co-writing with the Black trans community it featured), here the camera footage provides an almost surveillance-like feel, as if we are bearing witness to extremely intimate dynamics to which we shouldn’t be privy. It accentuates Ching-Tsou and Baker’s mission to both highlight what is considered taboo in a conservative society and, therefore, what should not be.

The camera gets uncomfortably close when I-Ann is being ridiculed for being a high school dropout by old friends at a party. It sits close by as Shu-Fen and Johnny drunkenly begin their romance. It hovers above I-Jing as she considers taking a butcher knife to her devil hand (in fact, most of the film is shot from I-Jing’s height perspective, even when she isn’t around). And, when the film comes to a head in the final act at the grandmother’s 60th birthday party, it feels considerably close to the kind of viral video that might be passed around YouTube or TikTok. It is a film that is at once personal and awkwardly public.

Unlike Baker’s directorial work, and despite the film’s more serious, anxiety-driven themes, Left-Handed Girl is ultimately quite optimistic while never succumbing to the saccharine. It barrels its way towards its rambunctious ending with admirable vulnerability, seamlessly. Its gorgeous final scene suggests that, even if certain class boundaries and pain are inevitable, at least we can push forward by being radically real with one another. Perhaps the route towards happiness is paved with honesty.

Left-Handed Girl screened at the 2025 AFI Film Festival.