A year after Anora swept the Oscars, another Sean Baker project filmed all the way back in 2022 is finally seeing the light of day – Left-Handed Girl, the solo directorial debut of his long-term collaborator Shih-Ching Tsou.
Baker takes a back seat as co-writer and editor here, although his involvement was still crucial in getting this Taipei-set family drama off the ground after nearly 20 years in development. In fact, before the pair even collaborated on Baker’s acclaimed films including The Florida Project and Tangerine, they were both mentioning this in interviews as their likely next collaboration – surprisingly, very little has changed from the story’s original conception in all the years it’s been left on the back burner.
“The story structure has always been the same”, Tsou told Zavvi. “But there is one character that changed – originally, the family had a pet monkey as I grew up with one when I was young, but in pre-production, we discovered that they have very strict restrictions about having monkeys in Taiwanese productions.
“We couldn’t secure a licence or find a trainer in time, but the vet who was going to loan us the monkey recommended using a meerkat instead, because they’re far better at taking direction than monkeys are. And he was right, it was a great performer!”
Set amidst the hustle and bustle of Taipei’s night markets, the drama follows five-year-old I-Jing (Nina Ye) who has just recently moved back to the big city with her single mother Shu-Fen (Janel Tsai) and angsty teen sister I-Ann (Shih-Yuan Ma). As the family’s noodle store struggles to pay the rapidly increasing rent, the two sisters begin to rebel against their surroundings in different ways.
In I-Jing's case, the otherwise adorable kid suddenly starts shoplifting after being told by her superstitious grandfather that she needs to stop using her left hand, “the devil’s hand”. Even though everyone else tells her this is outdated nonsense, it stays with her – and after failing to make herself right-handed, she starts using the devil hand as an excuse for mischief.
This is very loosely autobiographical for Tsou; she knows this happened to her, but she was so young she now has zero recollection of it at all.
“It’s different to my experiences because I was corrected very early on, I didn’t even know I was originally left-handed until I got to high school and my grandfather told me. He corrected me when he saw me using a knife with the left hand, but I wasn’t corrected in everything; many years later, when I held a microphone naturally with my left hand, I realised I might not have been right-handed.
“I eventually confirmed it with my mum, but she didn’t even remember as it was that early. And in all the years I’ve been going back to Taiwan whilst developing this film, I’ve told people about my story and the response has been unanimous, that this doesn’t happen anymore as this taboo no longer exists.
“When we eventually went into production and found Nina, her mum told me that she was also left-handed at birth, and her grandmother had to retrain her because of superstitions. This meant that WE had to retrain her and make her left-handed again, which is crazy – I'm thankful I didn’t listen to the people who told me this no longer happens, as this is a more widespread story in Taiwan than we realise.”
In fact, traditional superstitions hang over the narrative in other ways. In one scene, older sister I-Ann bumps into former classmates from her high school, who all changed their names for good luck in the hopes of getting into a good university.
“So many people go to fortune tellers, and that’s something my mum did – they told her I needed to change my name because the characters in my name looked too male, and that I was going to have a difficult life if I kept my birth name. And they were right to an extent, it took me 25 years to make this film, it might have been faster if I changed it!
“But this is something that is quite widespread; when I went to my 10-year high school reunion, everybody had changed their names and I was the only one with their original regional name. It was fascinating – but in the long run, keeping that name has worked out.”
Much of the drama unfolds in the night market, and as an extremely low-budget production shooting in guerilla style, remaining inconspicuous to the public when there were limited filming hours was one of the big challenges.
“We never wanted to close the market to film, we wanted to utilise the real energy of it, which is why we ended up shooting on an iPhone, it’s the only way you can pull it off. With a real film camera, you won’t be left alone as everybody will come up and ask about the movie and if there are any celebrities around – and on the first day, we couldn’t shoot at all, people just wouldn’t go away as they had caught wind of a film set being there.
“We went from having 20 people on our crew on the first day to just six on the second; our cinematographers, script supervisor, and our lighting and sound people as well as myself, and we had to find ways to hide them and our camera in the market without anyone noticing. It’s how we captured the real vibe.”
Using an iPhone also had the added advantage of further embedding the audience in the young protagonist’s headspace. A market that will likely seem mundane to adults seems alive with wonder when shot from a child’s eye perspective, the digital camera catching the neon lights in a way that seems almost magical.
“The very first frame of the film is a kaleidoscope image, which was inspired by my daughter’s toy – I picked it up one day and was amazed at how I’d never seen a film using this kind of imagery. I wanted this at the start to set the tone, but from there, it was essential we had a camera that would best feel like a little girl’s eyes, following her at her level, and absorbing the market in the way she would.
“But it’s also really practical on a production this size. The crew were hiding in a lot of tight spaces, and using an iPhone meant we could squeeze in an extra person; if they were in a truck, we could just tape this to the window and they could drive around capturing everything!”
Tsou co-wrote the screenplay with Baker, who she first met at film school more than 20 years ago, but his visa couldn’t be approved in time to fly out to the set. However, she is adamant that his fingerprints are just as much over the finished product as hers.
“We worked together to formulate the story, but he’s got a keen dramatic instinct; he can take experiences that are personal to me and find ways to incorporate them into an interesting story. He also has a magic editing ability, and as he wasn’t on set, he was piecing it together from afar, which means the film has as much a western perspective as a Taiwanese one that gives it a very special touch.
“It’s a mix of two distinct sensibilities; a Western view of Taiwan mixed with an authentic Taiwanese story. Speaking to Taiwanese audiences, it doesn’t feel anything less than authentic to them, because there are so many little details that could be ripped from their lives, told with their very specific sense of humour.
“The only thing that doesn't feel authentic to modern Taiwanese life is what happens to the meerkat – that's a little too ridiculous!”
Left-Handed Girl is released in select UK cinemas on 14th November and will be streaming on Netflix from 28th November.
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