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In my review of Bong Joon Ho’s Mickey 17, I looked at the types of films directors have made after being awarded the Oscar. Generally these are comparable, sometimes they are downturns (as was the case with Mickey 17) but rarely are they a big surprise. 

I’m not sure many would have predicted that, following his big win for Anora, Sean Baker would return with a subtitled Taiwanese movie. It should be noted that Baker is only the co-writer and producer on this one. The director is Shih-Ching Tsou, and as it is Tsou and Baker have worked together on almost all of their previous movies. Normally it is him directing and her producing so all they have done is swapped roles. Tsou, who is American Taiwanese, wasn’t actually involved in Anora, but she did work with Baker on The Florida Project and if you seen that film then this one doesn’t feel like a departure for the duo at all. Other than it not being in English and not being set in the US, this is very similar to that 2017 movie. Both feature single mothers with a small daughter, struggling to make ends meet in some suburban sprawl. Both see the child running free around the local community as well and some of the shots of this are practically identical. 

The biggest difference is the Taipei location, which features as heavily here as the surrounding area of Disneyland did in The Florida Project. That was a swampy and concretey expanse of American suburbia though, whereas this is a built up and vibrant market district. The little girl isn’t as precocious Brooklynn Prince’s Moonee either. Played by eight year old Nina Ye, I-Jing is confident but not as streetwise and her plot thread, and the title, comes from the belief that her dominant upper limb is somehow possessed by the devil, having been inadvertently told as much by her obstinate grandfather. 

Obviously the name of this film has links to that of this website and I was once surprised when an acquaintance asked me, with some apparent consternation, if they were allowed to read my reviews since they themselves were left handed. Clearly the name of this blog is not intended to exclude this 12% of the population but alludes to a scene in The Princess Bride that celebrates ambidexterity (I am always surprised when people do not get this reference). I am not prejudice to left handers but this film presents a modern world that in some respects still is. 

There are other outdated views that drive the drama here as well, particularly patriarchal ones, and alongside young I-Jing is the rest of her entirely female family unit, each of them trying to make ends meet in the Taiwanese capital. Their relationships do not seem that strong; while they clearly love little I-Jing, their skills in compassionately caring for a child are not much better than the grandfather’s. 

Within all of this there are other interesting elements, including a slightly random episode with a meerkat, and although not as energetic or captivating as Sean Baker’s other work it is a gently moving and cautiously melodramatic film that ties together, if not tying up, at the end. Shih-Ching Tsou is a director to watch and it is good to see Taiwanese cinema getting a UK cinema release. After a short run Left Handed Girl is now on Netflix and as ever the default option is the dubbed version so make sure you change the language and subtitles before you watch it.