In 2004, the world got its first sign of the grounded emotionality that collaborators Shih-Ching Tsou and Sean Baker could create in their co-directed neorealist feature “Take Out.” A portrait of a young man struggling to make ends meet in New York City by biking around delivering food, it was made for next to no money yet still left a mark because of how authentically lived-in it is.
Now, more than 20 years later, “Left-Handed Girl,” which is directed by Tsou from a script she co-wrote with Baker, trades NYC for Taipei and a bike for a scooter while maintaining the same sense of attention to detail and character. Though broader in scope as it follows a mother and her two daughters as they adapt to a move into the city, it shows how Tsou, a longtime producer on many of Baker’s films from “Tangerine” to “Red Rocket,” is more than capable of not just directing a film all her own, but giving it a distinctly bittersweet emotional spark that grows on you. Even when the film can get tangled up in subplots that don’t quite have the same impact as all the moments we get with the main trio finding a new path forward, it still mostly holds together.
Premiering Thursday in the Critics Week sidebar at the Cannes Film Festival, it begins with us getting to just observe how the loving yet troubled matriarch Sho-Fen (Janel Tsai), her rebellious teenage daughter I-Ann (Shih-Yuan Ma), and adorable younger child I-Jing (Nina Ye) are each dealing with the big change in their life. Though it seemed like this would be something of a fresh start for them with a nice place to live and more stable employment, the reality is that their apartment is much smaller than it seemed in photos and the job Sho-Fen has running her own humble restaurant at a night market comes with an unforgiving landlord who keeps grilling her for rent. In other words, they can’t seem to catch a break as the days gently blur together.
As the family encounters further complications and tries to keep afloat, the story settles into a delicate rhythm where there are moments of earned humor that only sharpen the more painful elements that exist alongside them. Take a sudden tragedy involving a unique pet that shatters the heart of poor I-Jing just as it leads to the most hilarious sequence where the news covers its aftermath. Life, for all the ways we try to maintain control of it, is full of these moments that can be both hilarious and heartbreaking.
Punctuated by recurring use of upbeat music, the film is just sweet enough in how it explores this without falling into being saccharine or sanding off the rougher edges. We see the sadness in the eyes of Sho-Fen as she has to shoulder pains from her past that she thought she might be free from, just as we then get to fully experience the joy and silliness of I-Jing going on a stealing spree.
This stems from the young girl being told that to be left-handed is to be the devil so, being a child, she takes this literally and begins using that hand to carry out these thefts. After all, it’s not her. The devil that has taken control of her left hand. As shot via an iPhone, these sequences of her going out and stealing everything she can feels like the visual style of the aforementioned “Tangerine” while capturing the more childlike wonder that was present in “The Florida Project.” But just as critically, Tsou isn’t afraid to lean into the darkness that can come from adults telling a child that something is wrong with them.
It’s surprising, yes, but all part of that fitting balance that the film is able to walk. Just when you think you’ve settled into a moment where it is safe to laugh, there will be something more quietly shattering that sneaks up on you. Even just a moment where the music fades and a character rides a scooter in silence speaks volumes, complicating the earlier playful rides we were taken on through the bustling city with something more effectively somber. It shows that Tsou is both interested in these emotional swerves and brings an incisive understanding about how to pull them off effectively without sacrificing one tone at the expense of another.
That “Left-Handed Girl” arrives at something approaching more earnestly hopeful is itself an achievement, but it also feels like a fitting echo of the ideas that the duo first explored together in “Take Out.” Life is full of casual cruelties and uncaring, even hurtful people, though there is also community that can carry us through. It’s not an easy undertaking by any means, but neither is life. But in the corner of a tiny little night market, the film carves out something quietly sublime all the same. You’ll only wish you could steal a moment longer to spend a bit more time with I-Jing and her family as they start anew. Lucky for us, that they are lovingly captured by a talented filmmaker like Tsou, who herself feels like she’s just getting started, makes it more sweet than bitter.
