Sean Baker Collaborator Shin Ching-Tsou’s Debut Is An Trustworthy, Darling Problem Of Patriarchal Norms

There’s an incandescent sweetness to Left-Handed Woman, the solo directorial debut from long-time Sean Baker collaborator Shin Ching-Tsou. Co-written and edited by him, the movie is nonetheless distinctively Ching-Tsou’s, a romantically humorous rebuke of patriarchal conventions and Taiwanese traditionalism. Centering on three generations of ladies with the particularly precocious five-year-old I-Jing (Nina Yeh) as its focus, Left-Handed Woman quietly challenges entrenched societal norms.

I-Jing is the left-handed woman in query, an impossibly cherubic-faced ball of vitality who appears blissfully unaware of the struggles round her. The household has relocated to Taipei the place her battle-weary mom, Shu-Fen (Janel Tsai), plans to open an evening market noodle stand. I-Jing’s older sister, I-Ann (Ma Shih-yuan), a brusque teenager with little to no endurance for anybody round her, procures a job at a betel nut stand that additionally traffics in cigarettes and occasional intercourse work (it’s a Baker movie, in any case).

Although point out is fabricated from I-Ann’s distinctive highschool grades, she can be a dropout for causes as but unknown, and the three girls are in dire monetary straits. It’s implied that Shu-Fen’s ex-husband was abusive and a thief, and although the 2 are separated, she insists on visiting him on the hospital the place he’s slowly dying of emphysema, and subsequently paying for his astronomical funeral prices. Between that, the meager earnings from her stand and I-Ann’s questionable self-discipline as an worker, issues usually are not wanting promising.

The lone shiny spot in lugubrious Shu-Fen’s life is the neighboring stall proprietor, Johnny (Brando Huang), who sweetly dotes on the women. He looks like one thing of a good-natured snake-oil salesman, with a cell amplification system completely strung round his head in order that he can hawk doubtful wares like a “magic sponge” which may deal with any doable clean-up state of affairs. I-Ann, in the meantime, topics herself to an unfeeling sexual relationship together with her lazy boss (Hsia Teng Hung).

As for I-Jing, issues appear gloriously harmless, particularly because the household inherits an lovable meerkat pet they identify GooGoo. However sooner or later, she is left alone together with her conservative grandfather (Akio Chen), who berates her for utilizing her “satan hand,” aka the left hand, and insists that she by no means use it round him. Taking this actually, I-Jing begins shoplifting together with her satan hand and, later, causes a devastating accident. In the meantime, Shu-Fen’s narcissistic mom (Xin-Yan Chao) busies herself with a profitable, extremely criminal activity which threatens to implicate everybody.

Left-Handed Woman Continues Baker & Ching-Tsou’s Quest For Verisimilitude

Left-Handed Woman is, like Tangerine, shot solely on an iPhone. The place it gave the latter movie a sure verisimilitude (compounded by its co-writing with the Black trans group it featured), right here the digital camera footage gives an nearly surveillance-like really feel, as if we’re bearing witness to extraordinarily intimate dynamics to which we should not be privy. It accentuates Ching-Tsou and Baker’s mission to each spotlight what is taken into account taboo in a conservative society and, due to this fact, what shouldn’t be.

The digital camera will get uncomfortably shut when I-Ann is being ridiculed for being a highschool dropout by outdated mates at a celebration. It sits shut by as Shu-Fen and Johnny drunkenly start their romance. It hovers above I-Jing as she considers taking a butcher knife to her satan hand (in reality, a lot of the movie is shot from I-Jing’s peak perspective, even when she is not round). And, when the movie involves a head within the last act on the grandmother’s sixtieth party, it feels significantly near the type of viral video that is likely to be handed round YouTube or TikTok. It’s a movie that’s without delay private and awkwardly public.

In contrast to Baker’s directorial work, and regardless of the movie’s extra critical, anxiety-driven themes, Left-Handed Woman is in the end fairly optimistic whereas by no means succumbing to the saccharine. It barrels its means in the direction of its rambunctious ending with admirable vulnerability, seamlessly. Its beautiful last scene means that, even when sure class boundaries and ache are inevitable, at the least we are able to push ahead by being radically actual with each other. Maybe the route in the direction of happiness is paved with honesty.

Left-Handed Woman screened on the 2025 AFI Movie Competition.