Left-Handed Girl Review: It’s Not Mother’s Day

With energy and empathy, Shih-Tsing Chou tells a tale of women’s hard graft in Left-Handed Girl, a triumph for its co-writer/director and cast.

However, her accompanying daughters, late-teen dropout I-Ann (Shih-yuan Ma) and precocious little I-Jing (Nina Yeh) are the ones who will learn that such moves are driven by the grind of capitalistic labor, and the oft-stifling bonds of tradition. Such things can be made to work in a person’s favour, but on the surface this matriarchal family unit seems doomed not to benefit from entrepreneurial largesse or familial solidarity.

Director Shih-Tsing Chou makes a wonderfully confident solo directing debut here, though her career as producer and actor goes back many years. She’s best known as a filmmaking partner of Sean Baker, the writer-director who claimed an astonishing four Academy Awards in one night when Anora won Best Picture in March. The pair have worked together since before co-directing Take Out in 2004 and, while they clearly have similar tastes in visual choices and thematics, Baker’s success has allowed him to monopolize this style (Baker-ish? Baker-esque?). He is a credited co-producer and co-writer on Left-Handed Girl but, as Baker himself stated when introducing the film at its premiere in Cannes’ Critics’ Week, it’s not about him. This story is specific to Taiwan and to Chou, and Baker gracefully highlights his colleague to help her forge her own vision.

Unlike the leads in Baker’s films, who are often jostling to escape their work and family situations, the central family of Left-Handed Girl is more resigned to their fate. They settle into their poky new apartment, while Shu-Fen prepares her noodle stall in a busy marketplace with stoic determination. Her daughters are more mixed in their approaches. I-Jing is wide-eyed and innocent enough to accept her new home and school, but I-Ann is distant to the point of antagonism. Taking a job in a legal high joint (with an under-the-table sideline in sex work), I-Ann is forever frustrated by her failure to graduate and get to university, and her apparent inability to move beyond this current station. Chou and Baker’s script leans into the tension between mother’s forbearance and daughter’s frustration. When I-Ann learns that her mother is still shouldering I-Ann’s absent father’s debts, she is understandably furious. In her first onscreen role, Ma gives a firecracker performance. For the first half of Left-Handed Girl, she is almost unlikeably abrasive, but her softer side slowly and necessarily emerges as time goes on.

The opening credits of Left-Handed Girl are backgrounded by the colours and shapes of I-Jing’s kaleidoscope, letting us know that this story is from her point of view. There has been a trend in this year’s Cannes entries of children learning adult lessons before their time, from Sound of Falling to Amrum. Of all the notable child performances in the Cannes selection, Yeh’s might be the best; she is an astonishing discovery to play I-Jing. Any number of harsh truths and revelations bear down on our central family in Left-Handed Girl, but I-Jing has to bear witness to them and process them as best a six-year-old can. Her sweet face and childish way of toddling along are reminiscent of Brooklynn Prince’s Moonee in Baker’s The Florida Project, his 2017 film about a group of children who, like I-Jing, are barely being sheltered from the realities of adult life . As in that film, Yeh’s charm works to offset her bad behaviour. In response to her volatile home situation, she develops kleptomania, pursuing material gain like her elders before her.

The title of the movie refers to the common old school belief that actions performed by the left hand are the work of the Devil. I-Jing is the left-handed girl of the title, a fact she is reminded of (and admonished for) by her grandfather (Akio Chen). Chou says the idea for the film came from a similar interaction she had with a grandparent when she was a child, though one hopes she didn’t contemplate DIY surgery like I-Jing to remove the offending limb. She trusts the old man’s wisdom like a little girl would, and every woman here trusts the systems in which they’re ensconced to see them through, no matter how flawed. I-Jing’s grandmother (Xin-Yan Chao) is partaking in an immigration scam to make extra money, while mother and sister continue to slave away at their respective jobs. These and other various plot threads come and go in Left-Handed Girl, all stitched together by Baker’s colourful but fluid editing. 

From Shu-Fen’s romance with neighbouring stallholder Johnny (A scene-stealing Brando Huang), to I-Ann’s woes with her boss and coworkers, the plot of Left-Handed Girl is pulled here and there from one scene to the next. It’s oddly reminiscent of a Mike Leigh film (despite moving at a pace he might find too screwball), relegating its narrative behind the characterisations before the emergence of secrets and lies that drive these people to do what they do. Combined with Chou’s assured direction, focused on the faces that betray deep wounds, it’s a heady way of throwing the audience into the chaos of these women’s lives. The speed at which everyone has to move in this hurly-burly world might grate on some, but a glimpse of I-Jing marching forth to put her stamp on the world brings the film to heel time and time again.

Left-Handed Girl tells a specific story, but Chou, Baker et al know that the bonds of family tradition are a universal anchor (or a noose, depending on your point of view). Their accelerated vision yearns to push these women past their current limitations, and it’s a refreshing ride to watch them find their voice in a loud, loud world.

Left-Handed Girl premiered at the Cannes Film Festival on May 15, 2025, in the Semaine de la Critique strand. Read our list of 20 movies to watch at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival!