“Left-Handed Girl” (“Zuopiezi nuhai”)
(Taiwan/France/USA/UK)
Metacritic (5/10), Letterboxd (2.5/5), Imdb.com (5/10), TMDB.com (5/10), Imdb.com critics review
#BrentMarchant #LeftHandedGirl #Taipei #singlemother #nightmarketstand #dysfunctionalfamily #CriticsChoiceAward #CannesFilmFestival #NationalBoardofReview #SeanBaker
Fewer moviegoing experiences are more exasperating than comedies (or comedy-dramas) that try too hard but invariably fall flat. These insipid, allegedly zany offerings try viewer patience with their listless narratives, lack of substance and even greater absence of laughs. But, unfortunately, that’s precisely what dooms this second feature outing from writer-director-producer Shih-Ching Tsou. The film follows the lives of a single mother, Shu-Fen (Janel Tsai), and her two daughters, I-Ann (Shih-Yuan Ma) and I-Jing (Nina Ye), who relocate (from where it’s never made especially clear) to Taipei (where they already seem to have a surprisingly established support network) to open a street food eatery in a stall at a popular city night market. Together and separately, they struggle to adapt to their new circumstances with supposedly funny, touching and occasionally dramatic outcomes. However, the follow-through on fulfilling these objectives is weak at best, most likely attributable to a narrative that tries to incorporate far too many story threads, most of which are severely underdeveloped. The result is a picture that comes across like a strung-together collection of episodes hoping to combine to make for a cohesive story, an effort that yields an epic failure, to be sure. Even the premise providing the film with its title – the adventures of a young, left-handed girl – is woefully thin, not much to build upon in drumming up a viable and engaging story. The fault here lies with an anemic script co-authored by the filmmaker and her frequent collaborator, writer-director Sean Baker, who captured four Oscars for his 2024 release “Anora,” including honors for best original screenplay, a proficiency that clearly hasn’t transferred over in this release (not that it was even readily present in its predecessor for that matter). Except for one segment near the film’s end, “Left-Handed Girl” largely lacks the edge found in many of Baker’s previous works, frequently soft-pedaling its material here to the point of almost becoming innocuous, playing like a namby-pamby family comedy with a few risqué bits thrown in to entertain the adults in the audience. What’s most annoying, though, is the performance by relative newcomer Ye, who constantly mugs for the camera and whose saccharin-encrusted performance becomes increasingly cloying with each passing frame. Yet, despite the many foregoing issues, the film has nevertheless amassed considerable recognition thus far, including two Critics Choice Award nominations, a nomination and win at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival, and a designation as one of 2025’s Top International Films by the National Board of Review, among numerous additional honors by critics’ organizations and other film festivals. Perhaps I’m missing something here, but I honestly don’t understand the hype and support this production has garnered. I expect more out of offerings like this and from the parties involved in this project. In this case, I guess that can be chalked up to more than just the girl being left-handed.