Left-Handed Girl is a Taiwanese drama about a single mother who moves back to Taipei with her two daughters to run a noodle stand in the night market. It’s one of those films where the stakes don’t appear that high – will the mother make the rent this month?; will the littlest daughter settle at her new school?; what’s grandma’s game? – yet we become so attached to this family and their survival it will all matter a great deal. It also features an adorable pet meerkat, GooGoo, and I doubt you’ll see a better film starring an adorable pet meerkat called GooGoo this year. I’d bet my life on it.
I doubt you’ll see a better film starring an adorable pet meerkat called GooGoo this year
The film is the solo directorial debut of Shih-Ching Tsou, who has produced many of Sean Baker’s films (Tangerine, The Florida Project, Red Rocket) and it’s from a screenplay they wrote together. It is filmed on an iPhone, which was as much a practical choice as an artistic one. When they tried shooting in the night market with cameras and a crew it drew too much attention. But it is ideally suited not only to capturing the rhythms of daily life but also, when held low, the world as seen through the eyes of a five-year-old. This is the youngest daughter, I-Jing, played by Nina Ye, who is cute as a button. She’d be the sweetest thing in this if it weren’t for her pet meerkat GooGoo.
We eavesdrop on a fragile adult world which, we sense, could implode at any moment. I-Jing’s mother is Shu-Fen (Janel Tsai), who desperately needs to make a go of the noodle stand, particularly after having to pay for the funeral costs of her no-good, abusive ex-husband. (Her food looks glorious, by the way.) Her older daughter is the teenage I-Ann (Shih-Yuan Ma) who hides her vulnerability behind anger, resentment and contempt. She finds employment at a tobacco and betel nut stand where sexual exploitation takes place behind the scenes. This is a deeply patriarchal society. Grandma (Xin-Yan Chao) will, we discover, be leaving her apartment to her well-off son rather than Shu-Fen – and is she involved in sex-trafficking? Possibly, although it’s never entirely clear. This is also a traditional, superstitious society where being left-handed is taboo. I-Jing is left-handed and grandpa (Akio Chen) is horrified. ‘It’s the devil’s hand’, he tells her. It’s ‘evil’, he says. He forbids her to use it. It is painful witnessing her attempts at right-handedness but if her left hand is demonic, what use might she put it to? (You’ll find out.)
The cinematography is often wonderful, particularly as we follow I-Jing’s little legs as she navigates the market, or we follow I-Ann and I-Jing on a moped, hair blowing out behind. It isn’t a bleak film even though there are bleak moments – such as when, for example, I-Ann, who could not afford to go to university, is invited to a party by her former high-school classmates where she is treated as a prostitute. (She’s destroyed by that.) But it is also tender – the scenes between I-Jing and GooGoo are wonderfully tender – without ever being sentimental. That said, don’t – as I did – get too attached to GooGoo is all I will say.
There’s no denying that the end is melodramatic. A big family secret (oh yes) is revealed at a birthday celebration and while this doesn’t feel quite in keeping with the understated nature of all that’s gone before it’s not a deal breaker. You’ll be so invested in this family and their decisions and whether grandma – such a nasty woman! – will get her comeuppance that you’ll easily forgive a final twist that doesn’t quite land.
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