In the opening scene of Shih-Ching Tsou’s Left-Handed Girl, 5-year-old I-Jing lifts a kaleidoscope to her eye. The car’s interior, the highway rushing by, and the shimmer of Taipei on the horizon become refracted with her mother and sister in gold, blue, and green. From the outset to its closing scene, the film—which is Taiwan’s submission for the 2026 Academy Awards and is now streaming on Netflix—invites us to consider what is passed down, warped, and shared across three generations of Taiwanese women.
There is Shu-Fen, who has moved her daughters back to Taipei to set up a noodle stand in a bustling night market after a prolonged seeming exile in the countryside. With her is I-Ann, a knife-eyed, defiant 20-something who searches for a sense of worth after missing out on college. Finally, there is I-Jing, the youngest, who experiences Taipei in two paradoxical settings: the dizzying, thriving neon of the night market and the stultifying fluorescent lights of her grandparents’ apartment.
In the opening scene of Shih-Ching Tsou’s Left-Handed Girl, 5-year-old I-Jing lifts a kaleidoscope to her eye. The car’s interior, the highway rushing by, and the shimmer of Taipei on the horizon become refracted with her mother and sister in gold, blue, and green. From the outset to its closing scene, the film—which is Taiwan’s submission for the 2026 Academy Awards and is now streaming on Netflix—invites us to consider what is passed down, warped, and shared across three generations of Taiwanese women.
There is Shu-Fen, who has moved her daughters back to Taipei to set up a noodle stand in a bustling night market after a prolonged seeming exile in the countryside. With her is I-Ann, a knife-eyed, defiant 20-something who searches for a sense of worth after missing out on college. Finally, there is I-Jing, the youngest, who experiences Taipei in two paradoxical settings: the dizzying, thriving neon of the night market and the stultifying fluorescent lights of her grandparents’ apartment.
It is in the latter that I-Jing learns from her grandfather that using her left hand—a superstition of older generations—is taboo. Sensing I-Jing’s confusion, her grandfather shifts tactics, telling her that her left hand is the devil’s hand and that she must avoid using it at all costs.
What follows is a classic childish caper. Rather than avoiding her left hand, I-Jing begins using it to shoplift from other night market stalls, claiming it is the devil’s doing, not her own. But when she absentmindedly tosses a ball off her apartment balcony with her left hand—sending her pet meerkat plummeting to its death—she is jolted into believing her grandfather’s archaic warning. Eventually, I-Jing’s theft catches up with her, and she is forced to confess her bad behavior to her sister. Instead of scolding her, I-Ann marches her to their grandparents’ apartment and demands that their grandfather take back his admonition. She scolds him, arguing that his prejudice against left-handedness is as backward—and potentially as traumatizing—as the now-defunct, centuries-old tradition of breaking and binding girls’ feet.
It’s this line that throws into sharp relief what Left-Handed Girl is really about. Despite its title, the film isn’t all that interested in I-Jing’s left-handedness, except as an avenue to inject hijinks into a film that might otherwise be described as poignant. Rather, Left-Handed Girl places its emphasis squarely on “Girl.” It explores the struggles and indignities women face and the ways in which society is built on their subjugation—from ancient practices such as foot-binding to the horror and universal panic of an unexpected, unwanted pregnancy.
A young girl lies on a bed with her left hand stretched out above her. Stuffed animals are on a shelf above her head.
Ye in Left-Handed Girl. Left-Handed Girl Production Co./Netflix
Consider Shu-Fen. In one of her first scenes, she negotiates with a landlord for a spot to set up her noodle stand. The landlord smiles, encouraging her to take the large, central space even as she politely inquires about something smaller. He later warns her that his rent deadlines are stringent: If she doesn’t pay on time, he’ll find someone else to take her spot. This scene is Chekhovian in its foreshadowing; not long after, Shu-Fen finds herself buried in debt after covering her late estranged husband’s medical and funeral expenses because she is his only living relative. The burden of gendered caregiving, even for a neglectful spouse, causes her to nearly lose her only source of income.
I-Ann, too, acts as a vessel through which we might see the injustices of female life. In her work as a betel-nut beauty, she dons tiny miniskirts and strappy tank tops, selling nuts from a roadside stand to drivers who chew the nuts for their stimulant and narcotic effects. Whether or not she is being sexually exploited in the job itself is up for interpretation. I-Ann seems fully in control of her choice to work there, hoping to earn more than her mother does at the noodle stall. She also seems to be an active participant in her sexual relationship with the stand’s owner, though a scene where he ogles another girl while I-Ann listlessly performs fellatio on him makes it clear that their relationship is an uneven one.
There’s no shortage of other misogynistic indignities. Shu-Fen and her sisters, for instance, plan a 60th birthday celebration for their mother, only for her to give the credit to their brother, who contributed nothing to the effort. In a family argument, it’s also revealed that Shu-Fen’s parents are leaving their Taipei apartment to that son in their will, despite the fact that he seems to do very little to care for them compared with his sisters. Later, when Shu-Fen is unable to pay rent for her noodle stall, the man running the neighboring stall offers to lend her money. While it’s clear he has a crush on her and wants to help, she refuses the cash, unsure if accepting the loan would come with strings attached.
There’s an undeniable heavy-handedness to all this. At one point, I-Ann suddenly lurches to the curb and vomits profusely, a clear sign of her unwanted pregnancy. The revelation is almost anticlimactic—inevitable, even. How could a film attest to the struggles of women without including the tried-and-true “Oh no, I’m pregnant!” moment? Mercifully, Tsou doesn’t allow this plot device to drag unnecessarily—there are no long sequences of I-Ann waffling over what to do or any tortured scenes of a young woman navigating abortion. Instead, the pregnancy is used to force a dramatic, propulsive confrontation in the film’s penultimate scene.
One can’t help but wonder if this narrative clumsiness isn’t the influence of Sean Baker’s involvement as co-writer, producer, and editor of the film. Best known for his films Anora and The Florida Project, Baker has an obvious fixation with the plight of poor women. Though it’s always difficult to assign authorship in such a collaborative medium as film, the editing of certain scenes—particularly the ending—seem to needlessly emphasize tragedy while undermining the possibility for more complex portrayals of its subjects.
Left-Handed Girl is strongest when it takes an ambivalent or matter-of-fact approach to its characters and their plights, as it does when paying rapturous homage to Taipei from a child’s-eye camera that drips in wonderment or indulging in the occasional visual joke, such as when I-Jing contemplates a meat cleaver, clearly wondering if she ought to chop off her left hand.
One of the few social issues that the film treats with humor and subtlety is that Shu-Fen’s mother seems to be embroiled in a human trafficking ring, using her U.S. visa to ferry Chinese women into the United States illegally. Drops for visas and passports are conducted in an empty club where an older couple practices their tango under lurid Christmas lights. Shu-Fen’s mother keeps bringing back copious amounts of vitamins from the United States to gift to her daughters, who unequivocally do not want them. At one point, the traffickers have to ask Shu-Fen’s mother to keep her constant chatter to a minimum; one of their clients complained that she talked the entire 15-hour flight to the States.
Beautifully acted and gorgeously shot, Left-Handed Girl is loose, free, and unhindered when it allows its characters a little bit of breathing room, focusing on the authentic, often ridiculous contradictions of being a fully realized person trapped in a black-and-white world.
A woman and young girl in helmets smile as they ride a motorbike along a street.
Ye and Ma in Left-Handed Girl. Left-Handed Girl Production Co./Netflix
So, what does it want to say about the female experience in contemporary Taiwan? If you were to look only at the hardships faced by the protagonists, you would be forgiven for thinking the film has an extremely pessimistic view of what it means to survive as a woman in a misogynistic society.
Yet there are moments where Tsou seems to hint at something transcendent. It comes through most beautifully in a sequence where I-Ann leads I-Jing through the night market, encouraging her to apologize and return all the items she shoplifted. What could have been a scene heavy on scoldings and shaming instead unfolds into a grace-filled, truly moving succession of adults who forgive I-Jing, telling her not to do it again. All the while I-Ann drops her facade of world-weary jadedness and smiles at her sister with love. Scenes such as this, where characters are allowed to live in the aftermath of their struggles, suggest that there is, perhaps, a life beyond the shame women are so often forced to endure.
The night market, the family dancing in the noodle stall, the many close-ups of I-Jing’s hands intertwined with her mother’s—Left-Handed Girl is trying to tell us something about how women might experience freedom even under the burdens of misogyny, if only they could show up as their most honest, metaphorically “left-handed” selves. In these moments, the film truly sings, offering up a view of women’s lives in Taiwan that is at once critical and full of hope.
