Left-Handed Girl

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t W Intimate, beautiful, and a great movie. Rated 4/5 Stars •  Rated 4 out of 5 stars 11/15/25 Full Review Matthew D Left-Handed Girl is an instant masterpiece of empathetic drama and delightful laughter. Taiwanese-American director Shih-Ching Tsou’s Taiwanese indie drama Left-Handed Girl (2025) is an absolute pleasure you can watch right now on Netflix. Left-Handed Girl is a fabulously funny, cute, and touching film. I found it full of surprises and boasts dazzling direction from Shih-Ching Tsou! She directs with a real empathy for the struggles of working class families, parents, and children alike. It’s very moving with Tsou’s heartfelt family drama. There’s also surprisingly very consistently funny humor. The little girl I-Jing, portrayed by Nina Ye, is so adorable and amusing as this wandering kid. Writers Shih-Ching Tsou and Sean Baker came up with a fantastic premise of a single mother raising two daughters in Taiwan, while trying to run a noodle stall in Taipei’s night market. The humor is light-hearted and keeps you entertained, as the family drama builds towards a shocking finale. It feels very natural, sensitive, feminist, thoughtful, and raw. It’s cool that producers Sean Baker, Shih-Ching Tsou, Mike Goodridge, Alice Labadie, and Jean Labadie got such a wonderful picture made and released. Left-Handed Girl is easily up there with the very best films of the entire year! Janel Tsai is very powerful as this quiet, resilient mother Shu-Fen, just trying to make enough money for her impoverished family to survive. I found her incredibly mature, moving, and subtle. She’s lovely, skillful, and impressive throughout Left-Handed Girl. I have to check out her other Taiwanese films. Shih-Yuan Ma is wonderful, touching, and gorgeous as the angsty teenage daughter I-Ann, who basically has to raise her little sister herself, as the mother often ignores I-Jing. Her complex struggles are just as heartbreaking as the mother’s inner battles. This is a tremendous performance from one of the year’s best actresses. Nina Ya is so cute and playful as the little girl I-Jing, who wanders around and steals things from the other night market stalls. She’s so funny, whether she’s singing along to a K-Pop song or playing with her meerkat pet. Brando Huang is super sweet as the kind stall owner Johnny, who likes the mother. He clearly just wants to help this family in need and feels like a breath of fresh air to all the tragedies this family suffers. Akio Chen is fun as Wen-Xong Chen. Xin-Yan Chao is pretty and nice as Xue-Mei Wu. Teng-Hung Hsia is great as the sleazy betel nut stall owner A-Ming. Cinematographers Kao Tzu-Hao and Chen Ko-chin do incredible wide shots of Taipei like the motorcycle ride sequences. Hu-Hsuan Wei’s bright neon lights look amazing and bring the shots to life. Editor Sean Baker cuts the scenes with a startling immediacy and a very brisk pace. The tension keeps rising as you just fear what awful things could happen to this poor family. Going from the daughters to the mother’s perspective is always engaging and keeps the film moving along. It doesn’t even feel near 109 minutes long. Sound designers Samuel Nacach, Joe Dzuban, Jason Gaya, Sam Fan, and Xiaodan Li capture all the noisy bustle and side hustles of Taiwan’s night market scene, while clearly capturing each voice recording. Costume designer Chiao-Ying Hsu came up with very cute modern outfits for the teenage daughter. In conclusion, Left-Handed Girl is an outstanding film that is both hilarious and genuinely moving. Rated 5/5 Stars •  Rated 5 out of 5 stars 12/01/25 Full Review Adam W AMAZING movie! I felt fully immersed in the lives of the main characters, it was funny, moving and dramatic, showing the how family members are navigating our crazy and chaotic world. All the acting was amazing, and the 5 year old main character was simply astonishing. Must watch movie!! Rated 5/5 Stars •  Rated 5 out of 5 stars 11/30/25 Full Review Sam A This is such a realistic yet drug inducing slice of life film in Taiwan looking at the lives of different generations of girls. Rated 5/5 Stars •  Rated 5 out of 5 stars 11/29/25 Full Review Robert C Relentlessly depressing, with an unearned, tacked-on "happy" ending. Why would anyone want to inflict such a punishing tale of woe on an audience? Rated 1.5/5 Stars •  Rated 1.5 out of 5 stars 11/28/25 Full Review Ian W. Cut from the Sean Baker cloth, this film was a delight to watch. I loved the multigenerational approach to telling the story, providing just enough to truly care about each member of the family, especially as they feel more and more isolated from the greater extended family. It’s something many families experience, but this films “slice of life” quality really sent the message home. Sean Baker’s ‘The Florida Project’ is one of my favorite films of all time, so it made me happy that his contemporary, Shih-Ching Tsou, would also take a stab at working with a child actress, and I’m glad she did. Her ability to direct Nina Ye was incredible but also maintained the genuine behaviors of a child. “Fish have no wisdom and are dumb” - from my memory, this is a quote from the child, and it’s lines like these that make me happy and have me loving what I’m watching. Besides the solid script, I loved how this film looked. It didn’t settle for the grimy and gritty look and instead found color wherever it could. Given the literal kaleidoscope beginning and ending, I found this to an intentional decision, representative of Nina Ye’s character’s naive and unyielding optimism about life. This is the crux of the film and the breath of fresh air through all of the drama that unfolds. Rated 4/5 Stars •  Rated 4 out of 5 stars 11/25/25 Full Review Read all reviews

Left-Handed Girl

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