San Diego Asian Film Festival 2025 

After spending years in the country, a single mother and her two daughters move to Taipei and open a noodle stall in a bustling night market. 

Family ties that bind are also the ones that gag, right? Trying to survive on your own, with no husband for support and extra funds, armed with a fractious teenage daughter and a precocious toddler daughter, mom has little to shield her from the scorn of her elders and the rest of her extended family. Despite their insistence that family helps each-other, it seems all of them just want to continuously harangue Shu-fen (Janel Tsai) for all her failings, even in front of her children. Who can blame Mom for being at the end of her rope? 

So Mom Shu-Fen has moved her eye-rolling daughter I-Ann (Shih-yuan Ma) and her left-handed baby daughter I-Jing (Nina Ye) to the city, and opened a noodle stand at the night market, to bring in money they desperately need. But Mom can’t really run the noodle stand all by herself and is of course falling behind on payments far too soon, even with the help of nearby night market seller of “magic sponges” Johnny (Brando Huang), who clearly has a thing for Mom. 

Meanwhile big sister I-Ann takes a job at a betel nut stand and of course embarks on a misguided relationship with her boss there. Dressed like a walking advertisement and acting like a typical teenager, I-Ann soon finds herself concerned she might be, you guessed it, pregnant. But despite all her selfish issues, I-Ann never shirks on watching I-Jing, and in fact, takes over the motherly role when I-Jing needs some discipline and Mom is just too burned-out to do it. Which leads us to … 

Poor little I-Jing. All these grownups with their grownup problems around her, they rarely have time for her at all, much less to be engaging and mentally stimulating to a whip-smart little girl. And then of course grandpa, still stuck in his old-country mindset, insists that I-Jing using her left hand is the devils work and must be stopped at all costs, creating yet more turmoil in I-Jings expanding world. 

I-Jing is a bright girl, and she wants to help her family, whom she knows is struggling financially. Emotionally too, but hey, I-Jing can only handle so much. And so I-Jing comes across a brilliant plan by herself – we see her navigate the busy night market streets all on her own, just as she’s done many times before, but now I-Jing’s “devils hand” is cleverly filching all sorts of trinkets from various night market stalls. Nothing huge or terribly worth anything, but it turns out the “devils hand” is actually quite good at this, and I-Jing amasses an fairly impressive collection before she’s caught. 

All of this takes yet more tolls on our trio of women, and it all comes crashing down when they attend a dinner at a dim sum palace for Grandma’s (Ren Hanami) 60th birthday. All the family is there and Mom is clearly completely over how Grandma fawns over her one son and smilingly skewers her other children, all daughters. The censure coming from all directions seems to nudge I-Ann right over the edge, and she spills her own little families’ biggest secret right there in front of judgmental everyone. 

While Grandma’s birthday might be ruined, I-Ann’s outburst seems to have cleared the air with Mom, and our trio, armed with new understanding for each-other and with faithful Johnny tagging along, settle in to actually run a thriving noodle stand and live together, more or less in harmony. Which is sometimes, all you can hope for. 

Left-Handed Girl is now available to watch on Netflix! 

Reviewed by Alicia Glass