![‘Left-Handed Girl’ Review: Taipei-Set Drama Co-Written By Sean Baker is a Poignant Intergenerational Triptych [Cannes]](https://www.atlaswebrise.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/E28098Left-Handed-Girl-Review-Taipei-Set-Drama-Co-Written-By-Sean-Baker-is-a-Poignant-Intergenera.jpeg "E28098Left-Handed-Girl-Review-Taipei-Set-Drama-Co-Written-By-Sean-Baker-is-a-Poignant-Intergenera.jpeg"){kind=small}
“Left-Handed Girl” opens with a whimsical score that sounds like a sonic interpretation of the kaleidoscope that adorable five-year-old I-Jing (Nina Ye) looks through as she arrives in Taipei for the first time with her mother Shu-Fen (Janel Tsai) and older teen sister I-Ann (Shi-Yuan Ma). That bright piece of music comes to represent her innocent curiosity each time the nimble camera follows the vivacious and indeed left-handed girl through a new mischievous or misguided adventure in the neon-soaked metropolis.
That’s the point of view via which we enter filmmaker Shih-Ching Tsou’s poignant intergenerational triptych that eventually divides time between the members of this small family. Tsou’s first solo directorial effort, co-written with Oscar-winner Sean Baker, who also edited this picture, comes 20 years after the two co-directed “Take Out.”
READ MORE: Cannes 2025 Most Anticipated Films: ‘Sentimental Value,’ ‘Eddington,’ ‘Die My Love’
As quickly as they arrive in the Taiwanese capital, Shu-Fen rents a stand at a busy night market to sell food, while I-Ann, exhibiting rebelliousness not atypical of adolescence, though in her case laced with resentment, chooses to make money working at a betel nut stand with a boss of questionable character. They both had lived in Taipei before when Shu-Fen was married to I-Ann’s father. The estranged man briefly reenters the picture and destabilizes their already precarious finances. Time moves briskly on-screen thanks to Baker’s avid assemblage that keeps one aware that the trio is slowly forging a new life here without the need to specify in text how many weeks or months the narrative has covered.
Scenes dedicated to each of their individual experiences are interlaced with others where the three of them or two at least share space at the same time, making for a tapestry of situations that evolve the viewer’s understanding of what afflicts them separately and the conflicts they face as a unit. That this constant shifting of perspective succeeds for the most part is a tribute to Tsou and Baker’s intricate writing, both in terms of organic character development and the overall structure of the piece. The spontaneity with which the majority of the events seem to occur renders “Left-Handed Girl” all the more impressive.
For the perpetually distressed and overworked Shu-Fen, a semblance of positivity arrives when she starts dating Johnny (Brando Huang), a happy-go-lucky guy who sells cleaning gadgets next to her food stand. Unbeknownst to her, however, her daughters struggle with their new realities.
When her angry grandfather convinces her that her left hand is the “devil hand,” I-Jing uses the “cursed” extremity for petty stealing, self-fulfilling the prophecy of its badness. Later, the child becomes ridden with guilt when she starts attributing other tragedies to her hands. When exploring Taipei through I-Jing’s eyes, Tsou and cinematographers Ko-Chin Chen and Tzu-Hao Kao lean on a kinetic vibrancy that takes us through the night market and its saturated colors with both a sense of wonder and a hint of trepidation. Taipei is portrayed as a landscape in motion through choreographed chaos.
Rife with charged ambivalence, Ma’s performance as I-Ann is arguably the most challenging role, since her character links the other two generations in the same household, spanning a range of emotions. Nearly every interaction I-Ann has with Shu-Fen brims with harsh feelings and an unwillingness to offer much sympathy for the parent, while the opposite is true in her tender treatment of I-Jing. This triangular bond, fraught with unresolved rancor, only grows in its dramatic richness as the origins of some of these feuds are unveiled.
What ultimately surfaces as the common ill is the lower status that daughters have within the hierarchy of Chinese families. Birthing men is so desirable that a wife would be willing to raise her husband’s child from an affair with another woman as long as it’s a boy. Shu-Fen and her sisters have been victims of this secondary position from birth, brought up in the shadow of their male sibling. Raised in this patriarchal system, Shu-Fen’s mother, involved in clandestine activities, won’t defy the status quo in order to side with her daughters.
Tsou addresses such widespread and entrenched injustice not in a theoretical manner but showing its material consequences in everyday life, as this affects Shu-Fen’s ability to get financial support from her parents, and it negatively influences the decisions she makes for I-Ann because she’s been conditioned to believe saving face matters more than the feelings or desires of women in a family. Thankfully, I-Ann’s ferocious stance to not perpetuate the silence that has plagued them for generations appears as a catalyst for Shu-Fen to rethink her outlook. Watching the core trio of characters crumble and rebuild, always with each other’s help, even if begrudgingly, confirms they have a solid shelter to weather the storms.
Support independent movie journalism to keep it alive. Sign up for The Playlist Newsletter. All the content you want and, oh, right, it’s free.
Though a tad overambitious given all the threads that it partially unspools, some of which are only hinted at here, “Left-Handed Girl” effectively reintroduces Tsou as a fully-fledged writer-director operating with all the sage knowledge of someone who’s worked on plenty of projects with first-time actors, with children, or with unruly urban areas to tell stories with social relevance and formal flair. This time, though, she’s done that in the context of her homeland and inspired by stories close to her own. Feels like an ideal return. [B+]
Follow along for all our coverage of the 2025 Cannes Film Festival, including previews, reviews, interviews, and more.
