I guess the Anora effect spread faster than I thought. The minute you win Best Picture, opportunities come knocking all over the place. In this case, Shih-Ching Tsou, the equivalent of Sean Baker’s offensive coordinator for moviemaking, gets her chance to be a head coach at the movies. For her, that means bringing the Baker magic full circle…across the Pacific.
As you see in the picture, the Left-Handed Girl is adorable I-Jing (Nina Ye). She’s recently come to Taipei with her mother Shu-Fen (Janel Tsai) and older sister I-Ann (Shih-Yuan Ma). Shu-Fen is trying to start over: she opens a Night Market noodle stand, while I-Ann tries her hand at a, um, cigarette services convenient store run by A-Ming (Teng-Hung Hsia). That leaves our left handed queen free to roam the markets, or freak out her grandpa (Akio Chen) the minute she starts drawing not with her right hand.
Apparently Sean Baker’s style can translate across languages and continents. While partnering with the now Oscar winner, Shih-Ching Tsou absorbed whatever his secret sauce is, and applies it to her tale. The opening 10 minutes is pure joy, as we see Shu-Fen’s family enter the Night Market and open a new world for our actors, and the audience, to experience, with the delightful, optimistically hypnotic score laying the foundation for what perspective we’re viewing the movie through. Like a Baker film, Tsou’s gaze is with an open heart, leaving the possibilities open for all sorts of experiences for I-Jing and her family. Tsou then makes the world a little bigger, bit by bit; this is a homecoming for Shu-Fen, but a lukewarm one. I-Ann starts meeting classmates from school who are now in college, surprised at her job. I-Jing is having some fun, but also has to figure out why her sister and mom are always frustrated and why everytime extended family comes along, everyone gets tense. Tsou slowly takes our initial optimistic infinity and closes the walls in, like Sean Baker does with all his blue collar protagonists. Tension builds and builds, transforming our story into something else entirely, a bubble that’s inevitably going to pop…with dire consequences.
Tsou also picked up her producing partner’s casting tricks, mixing seasoned vet actors with new faces. Janel Tsai has been acting for two decades now, and is perfectly cast as Shu-Fen. She captures a working single mom in all aspects, steering the ship but emotionally always near her stressed out breaking point. She’s the necessary understated character so the two girls can let loose. Nina Ye is a great conduit as our Left-Handed Girl. She’s mostly cute, but Ye has a fascinating quiet observation face as she watches the world unfold around her. The scenes of her running around the night market I could have watched over and over again, a testament for her talents to hold the camera. Ye gets some emotional scenes she’s good in, but she doesn’t carry the emotional weight of the movie. That belongs to Shih-Yuan Ma. Her I-Ann is a mirror image of Bria Vinaite from The Florida Project. Her outfits would make anyone blush, but she does that to hide the turbulent multitude of emotions coursing through her body. Each new moment with hear reveals a new puzzle piece of the character, as your empathy grows with just how much we learn she’s clearly holding in. Two first time performances like that….I guess Left-Handed Girl made a deal with some sort of devil.
Let’s keep the Baker train going. Working class stories need to be told anywhere and everywhere. Let’s see if this specific style of storytelling works in Uzbekistan. Or Chad. Or Vatican City! That’s right: a story about the Holy Trinity Juice Stand who makes Orange/Mango/Apple smoothies. Shih-Ching Tsou and Sean Baker: balls in your court now.