In her directorial debut, “Take Out,” Shih-Ching Tsou (alongside co-director Sean Baker) managed to capture the constant ebb and flow of trying to keep your head above water as an immigrant in New York City. Shot on a minuscule budget of $3000, Tsou and Baker created an expressionistic verité portrait of the working-class backbone. One of the standout elements of that debut was the use of DVCAM, imprinting an almost “home movie” effect onto the film, placing the audience right into the heart of the film. Fast forward twenty-one years later and Shih-Ching Tsou is back in the director’s chair, this time solo but with a far more ambitious project. A sprawling screwball comedy about a mother who moves back to Taipei with her two daughters to open up a food stand in a very busy night market.
All three of them are doing their best to stay afloat, make ends meet, and maintain their family unit. The mother runs the food stall, and the eldest daughter (a high school dropout) gets involved with a shady betel nut business and its even shadier boss. Things only escalate from here – once the youngest daughter is told by her superstitious grandad that she must never use her left hand as it’s the devil’s hand, and her grandmother ends up getting involved in a dubious immigration fraud scheme.
This sets the stage for 108 minutes of fast-paced antics within the frenetic night markets of Taipei. At its core, Tsou’s second feature aims to unpack the messiness of inter-generational conflict between mother, daughter, and grandmother. In the face of economic strife, traditionalism and familial hypocrisy. Tsou’s deconstruction of an unconventional Taiwanese family works as an effective critique of patriarchal bias, the concept of constantly trying to meet unrealistic familial expectations, as well as what it’s like growing up amongst all of that.
The razor-sharp arguments throughout the film, paired with the incredibly cute obliviousness of Nina Yeh’s I-Jing, perfectly highlight the absurdity and childishness of it all. The performances throughout the project are fantastic, but Tsou manages to get a breakout child performance from Nina Yeh as the titular left-handed girl, the youngest daughter of the family, who is trying to come of age in all this messiness and her “devil hand”. The gloominess of “Take Out” is traded for a much more comedic screwball tone that manages to walk the line between stressful, hilarious, and incredibly earnest.
A lot of this is aided by the incredibly vibrant filmmaking at the heart of the film. The DVCAM’s been swapped out for an iPhone, resulting in imagery that is all the more fascinating. The imagery created by Tsou and the Cinematography team of Kao Tzu-Hao and Chen Ko-chin is so incredibly dynamic and colorful, the lights of the night market have a wonderful bloom to them. The colors pop, and the camera whizzes about with our characters in such a unique and playful way. It really feels as if we are seeing things with the same wide-eyed excitement as I-Jing. It feels invigorating to see someone lean into iPhone filmmaking once again in a way that really felt like a shake-up of digital filmmaking.
The use of the iPhone really allows for a visual language that manages to make such a sprawling and chaotic story feel so incredibly energetic and intimate. The iPhone filmmaking is not only an evolution of the DVCAM in “Take Out,” but there’s an argument to be made that it’s a unique evolution of the style of filmmaking that was once very commonplace in American Independent Cinema. It is integral to imbuing a sense of warmth amongst the working class, strife, and indifference that our trio of leads have to face throughout.
A highlight of the film is just how lived-in the whole world feels; there is a strong feeling of authenticity to not only the central setting of the Taipei night-market but also the various clubs, cramped apartments, shady beetle-nut lounges, and restaurants. The ensemble is all so hilarious and has great chemistry together, and almost every joke went down a treat. Despite the film being co-written, edited, and produced by Sean Baker, the film never feels like it’s treading the same ground as his work. Tsou’s direction is incredibly assured and moves at a very different wavelength from Baker’s.
Tsou uses a familiar story of a struggling family trying to make ends meet as a jumping-off point to remix and subvert our expectations by opting for something just as chaotic but trading out dourness for comedy. In particular, the film seeks to examine the multigenerational dynamics in relation to capitalism, sexism, societal expectations, and how they all clash with modern womanhood. The theme of how men are held to completely different standards than women in the asian family, even by other women, leads to some moments that go for both the dramatic and comedic jugular. The film’s crescendo, a birthday party that results in complete chaos and familial disarray, is perhaps one of the funniest scenes of the year.
“Left Handed Girl” is not just a remarkable sophomore feature — it’s a bold and inventive evolution of filmmaking and ideas first set in motion over two decades ago. The script transforms a story rooted in working-class struggle into a sharp, timely screwball comedy that playfully examines shifting perspectives, tradition’s grip, and the sheer absurdity of social expectations. The ensemble cast delivers consistently hilarious performances, while the film’s form itself feels daring — using the iPhone to craft vibrant, textured imagery that’s both intimate and alive. The result is a breath of fresh air, leaving audiences laughing well into the credits.
