A Rabbit’s Foot joined filmmaker Tsou Shih-Ching—known for co-directing the acclaimed Take Out (2004) with Sean Baker (and subsequently becoming one of the Anora director’s most trusted creative partners)—in London to discuss her film Left-Handed Girl, a moving family drama set on the bustling streets and night markets of Taipei, and co-written by Baker himself.
Below, we speak with Tsou about why now was the perfect moment to release her debut solo feature, the secrets to directing child actors, and how to coax a standout screen performance from a meerkat (an easier task than you might think).
Luke Georgiades: It’s been 20 years since you first started working on this project with Sean. How does it feel to get this out into the world finally?
Tsou Shih-Ching: I’m very lucky. I’ve worked with Sean Baker since the beginning of my career. I didn’t even know if this could be a career. Working on his films, perfecting my own filmmaking skills. The idea needed to mature, the time needed to be right. It’s time, now, for Asian cinema to be on the global stage.
LG: You’ve been wanting to make this for so long. Were you ever feeling impatient waiting for the right time to align with the present?
TSC: After I finished shooting the film, Sean was meant to jump into the edit, but he went on to make Anora. That was the only point I felt impatient. We had finally shot this movie, and we weren’t able to finish it. Before then, working on Sean’s films are so fulfilling. You learn everything you need to know about filmmaking on a Sean Baker production. My creative energy have always been consumed on his sets. My daughter is also 9 right now. I wanted to be able to spend time with her. I didn’t want a nanny to raise her. A lot of career women don’t have a choice.
LG: You wrote this movie before your daughter was born. Did the story change after your experience of motherhood?
TSC: When we wrote the script in 2010 in Taiwan, the story arc and the characters stayed the same. Except for one character. In the original film, the meerkat was a monkey. I had a monkey pet when I was young. But you need a special certification to use a monkey in your film in Taiwan. We found a monkey on a mountain. But they’re a protected animal. So we spoke to a vet in Taipei and they recommended this meerkat. Meerkats are easy to train. You just put a cockroach in a ball, and it’ll chase it how you want.
LG: I have a hundred questions about your pet monkey.
TSC: [laughs] His name was Goo-Goo, like in the movie. One of my uncles had a lot of exotic pets, but he’d lose interest quickly, then he’d give them to my mom. I had so many weird pets going up. I had a monkey, multiple different types of bird. Eventually we had to send the monkey back to the mountains to live in a sanctuary there. When monkeys become teenagers they go a bit wild.
“I’m very lucky. I’ve worked with Sean Baker since the beginning of my career. I didn’t even know if this could be a career. Working on his films, perfecting my own filmmaking skills. The idea needed to mature, the time needed to be right. It’s time, now, for Asian cinema to be on the global stage.”
Tsou Shih-Ching
LG: How are you feeling about sitting in the director’s chair solo for the first time?
TSC: I’ve done everything on a film set. I’m like a firefighter now. It was all in me from those years of experience on Sean’s sets. Instinct. It’s a feeling. I can barely explain it.
LG: Tell me about the night market culture in Taipei.
TSC: I first took Sean to a night market in 2001. He fell in love with it immediately. The night market communities in Taipei are like a big family. They’re there every night together. We knew the night market needed to be a character in the film. That’s where you find all the little cultural details of Taiwan. We went back to Taipei in 2010 to write the script, and we found the night market you see in the movie, Tonghua. We ran into this little girl, she was five, and she was running around. We followed her all the way back to her mother’s noodlestand. She was exactly like the girl in our story. We made the first concept trailer for the movie with her.
LG: I love how playful the film is, especially when we’re seeing the film through Nina Ye’s perspective. Your affection for the city shines through. There’s a version of this movie that is much bleaker, but you never let it become just that.
TSC: It’s a life. It’s a real life. It’s a culmination of my 20 years of going back to Taiwan and picking up on all the details. Life isn’t one-sided. You laugh, you cry. You fight, you make up the next day. We want to see the whole spectrum of life. Just one colour is boring. It needed to be an immersive experience.
LG: The dynamic between the sisters here is as accurate as it gets. I’m the youngest of three brothers and I was triggered, actually.
TSC: [Laughs] I have a brother! An older brother. So that’s my experience. My mom has five sisters and one mother. That’s the dynamic I saw growing up. The fighting, the sense of competition. Even now, in their 70s, they still engage with each other like that. Every character in this movie is inspired by people around me.
“[Nina Ye’s] mom is her acting coach. Her mom told me, “You don’t need to hire a coach for her…I know how to make her laugh, I know how to make her cry, I know how to teach her the lines.” When we wanted her to cry, we would play sad music, and after the song ended her mom would tell her to imagine that she had a puppy, and that the puppy was dying, and that she’ll never see the puppy again.”
Tsou Shih-Ching
LG: What’s the key to getting a great performance from a child?
TSC: Nina had three years of acting experience by the time I cast her. She has been acting in commercials since she was 3. Her mom is her acting coach. Her mom told me, “You don’t need to hire a coach for her…I know how to make her laugh, I know how to make her cry, I know how to teach her the lines.” When we wanted her to cry, we’d play sad music, and her mom would ask her to imagine a dying puppy she’d never see again. It worked every time! But she’s a clever girl. She has her own mind. She already knows how to be a character in a scene. On the first day on set her mom told me that Nina was left-handed. She got corrected by her grandmother. She didn’t even know. We had to re-train her to use her left hand.
LG: You were also left-handed and were corrected by your grandfather at a young age.
TSC: A lot of people told me that the idea is outdated. Nina’s story proves that it still exists, people just don’t talk about it.
LG: The big climax of the film, at the birthday party, feels like a rotten tooth being pulled out. A lot of pain then a sense of relief.
TSC: I saw how my mom’s sisters fought. Families can be really nasty to each other. It can get ugly. That scene was inspired by Mike Leigh’s Secrets & Lies. It’s the classic Mike Leigh climax, where the cast get together and break up.
LG: You moved to New York after university in Taipei. How did your relationship with the city and your roots evolve since that move?
TSC: I fell in love with my own city again. I spent 23 years of my life in Taipei. That’s home. That’s where family is. I can never remove that from my brain or my body, and I notice every little detail of the city now. Living away for 25 years allowed me to eventually return to Taipei and look at it from a new perspective. I don’t take it for granted anymore.
Left-Handed Girl is out now in UK cinemas and on Netflix.
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