Early on in Shih-Ching Tsou’s Left-Handed Girl, one of its protagonists, an adorable Taiwanese girl named I-Jing (Nina Ye), is told by her grandpa that her left-handedness is a curse. “Don’t use left-hand in my house,” he says to her, yanking a crayon from her left hand into her right and sending a bolt of fear through the impressionable 5-year-old. “Left hand is evil,” he scolds. “It belongs to the devil.” The premise of Netflix’s newest Mandarin-language film might seem trivial, but learning about her “devil’s hand” brings I-Jing a quiet shame that is difficult to shake. Internalizing an age-old superstition, I-Jing silently begins to navigate the bustling city of Taipei with her much weaker right-hand, which takes on a life of its own. What she doesn’t know is that the rest of her family has their own version of a “devil’s hand” too.

In Tsou’s charming solo directorial debut, I-Jing, her teenage sister and their mother have just moved back to Taipei after years away in the countryside. Their mother Shu-Fen (Janel Tsai), opens a noodle stand in the capital’s famous night markets in an attempt to start a new life for her family. But a fresh start is rarely an easy one. Day after day, Shu-Fen toils to keep her food stall and family afloat — trying to pay the stall’s rent while juggling the debt she accumulated from her ex-husband’s funeral, and taking care of her daughters, who couldn’t be more different. The youngest, I-Jing, is steeped in an innocent earnestness, while her older sister, I-Ann (Shih-Yuan Ma), carries the fierce determination of an angsty teen intent on proving she can support the family better than anyone else.

Tsou and longtime collaborator Sean Baker co-wrote and produced the project, and Baker edited. Their distinct style is abundant throughout Left-Handed Girl, which strikes a delicate balance between intimacy and playfulness in a story that centers those historically on the margins. The two have worked side-by-side since co-directing Take Out in 2004, with Tsou’s influence woven through films that launched Baker into the spotlight, from Tangerine to The Florida Project to Red Rocket. Shot entirely on iPhones, like 2015’s Tangerine, the film uses the city of Taipei as its canvas and shows its landscape through the lens of each of its characters. It’s a treat being immersed in the brightly-colored, and often overwhelming night market from the point of view of I-Jing, who interacts with each stall like it’s her personal playground before dashing off to the next one.

Nina Ye as I-Jing and Shih-Yuan Ma as I-Ann in Left-Handed Girl.

Left-Handed Girl Film Production Co./Netflix

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Shih-Yuan Ma as I-Ann, Nina Ye as I-Jing and Janel Tsai as Shu-Fen in Left-Handed Girl.

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While Left-Handed Girl initially appears to center I-Jing and her cursed hand, the film pays equal attention to its female protagonists. Spanning multiple generations, Tsou offers the viewer a window into each character’s struggle between duty and desire, as they navigate a society where the personal largely remains private. Shu-Fen might be the caretaker of her three-unit family, but she remains the black sheep within her own. “A married daughter’s like water poured out,” her mother says to her after refusing to lend her daughter money, perpetuating a traditional belief that daughters are worthless once they are married. And during a family outing, Shu-Fen reluctantly opens up, only to have her sisters loudly bicker over her decisions as if they were their own.

Meanwhile, I-Ann spends most of her days at the betel nut stall, where she oscillates between flirting with older men for money, making snarky comments at the attractive young woman who just started working there, and sleeping with her sleazy boss. I-Ann’s stonewalled expression and high-pony attitude gives off the impression she doesn’t care about the job, and much less, her boss. But in moments of vulnerability, like after I-Ann attends a party with a former classmate who, unlike her, is attending college, cracks begin to appear in an otherwise tightly-wound facade. I-Ann’s commitment to and reluctance toward fulfilling her responsibilities are felt simultaneously in scenes of transit, as she whizzes through the streets and highways of Taipei on her scooter, en route to pick up her little sister, keep a watchful eye over the noodle stand, or sneak in her own small rebellions. I-Ann might scoff, but at the end of the day, she always shows up.

How much can a family bear before it begins to burst? Left-Handed Girl seeks to ask, as each character’s internal tensions bleed into broader family dynamics, culminating in more of an explosion than a slow unraveling. But perhaps the ultimate test of strength occurs when the dam breaks, Tsou seems to argue — when the water begins to flood, washing away old traditions and instead, creating something surprising and new.

The Monkey King is having a moment in America — and it’s been centuries in the making.

Wildly popular across Asia for generations as the focus of hundreds of adaptations on page, stage and screen, the Chinese superhero is also the star of a 2023 Netflix animated film, a blockbuster 2024 video game, and right now, a sold-out new opera at San Francisco Opera. Not bad for a character who made his literary debut in a 16th century Ming Dynasty novel.

The monkey who would be king

The Monkey King — known as Sun Wukong in Chinese — first burst fully-formed out of a rock in the classic 1592 novel Journey to the West, widely attributed to the poet Wu Cheng’en.

Steeped in Buddhist teachings and symbols, the story follows Sun Wukong’s epic journey towards enlightenment.

“He wants to be someone,” Frank Djeng, a cultural historian who has written about the character, said in an interview with NPR. “So he sets out to learn how to become immortal and powerful.”

The ambitious primate acquires remarkable superpowers. He can ride clouds like they’re skateboards, clone himself, and bash his enemies with a magic, telescoping stick.

But despite these skills, the gods reject him.

“He’s an outcast. He’s a rebel,” Djeng said. “He decides to go up to the heavens and kind of wreaks havoc there.”

Drawn to chaos

The Monkey King isn’t your typical square-jawed, noble superhero. Though he’s on a quest for enlightenment, Monkey is also a loud-mouthed mischief-maker, whose antics include stealing magical peaches from a sacred garden that grant immortality to the person who eats them – and then gobbling them down.

“I think we loved the monkey because of his courage, his longing for freedom, and his defiance against the gods,” said Chinese-Australian tenor Kang Wang, who plays the title role in the world premiere San Francisco Opera production and grew up obsessed with a 1980s live-action Chinese TV adaptation of the Monkey King story. “Also, he’s very playful. He’s always super happy and never sad.”

A still from the 2023 Netflix animated series The Monkey King — one among several major adaptations of the classic Chinese tale to break into the U.S. mainstream in recent years.

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This many-sidedness is key to understanding the character’s wide appeal. In Asia, the Monkey King has been reimagined as everything from a Communist-style proletarian hero fighting an oppressive bourgeoisie in the 1960s Chinese animated film Havoc in Heaven, to a cyborg in Sci-Fi West Saga Starzinger, a 1970s Japanese sci-fi anime series.

American Monkey 

Some 20th-century versions gained popularity beyond Asia. But American audiences have been slower to embrace the simian superhero — until now.

“It’s really stunning how the Monkey King is finally pushing through into the American consciousness,” said Gene Luen Yang, a cartoonist whose acclaimed 2006 graphic novel American Born Chinese weaves together the Monkey King legend with a contemporary story about the struggles of being an Asian American teen. Disney adapted the book into a TV series in 2023.

Yang said the character may until recently have seemed “too Asian” for most American audiences. But cultural shifts have changed that calculation, and Yang said he expects more American artists and producers will be monkeying around with the Monkey King in the years ahead.

“We all read manga, and we all watch anime,” Yang said. “As Americans, we’re much more used to that intersection between East and West.”

Justin Bieber
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Published November 28, 2025 7:38 AM PST