You can’t escape it — almost every mainstream Taiwanese movie has to come with the trademark characteristics of cuteness, sappiness and over-the-top absurdity. Those ingredients are clearly present in Ace of Sales, complete with the ubiquitous flamboyant gangster (Jack Na, 那維勳) who inexplicably finishes his sentences in poor English — but somehow it is bearable here; perhaps even endearing ... nah, we won’t go that far.
But perhaps because Ace of Sales is a heartwarming comedy not about the fire of youth (it features live, working, married adults), the screenwriters could not simply run amok with gimmicks presumably targeted toward the 15-and-under crowd. There has to be some substance in a film dealing with life in the workplace, and while the result is nothing groundbreaking, it makes a “well-balanced” mainstream film — in that it provides as many chuckles as cliches and as many heartfelt smiles as cringes. But most of all, the subject material is fresh — it actually takes the viewer through a maybe exaggerated but still interesting look into the world of the television shopping industry.
We’ve all seen on television the weirdly enthusiastic people selling once-in-a-lifetime-deal jewelry, invisible bras and magical sports equipment that can give you a flat belly. This film delves into the heart of it as protagonist Sue (Bianca Bai, 白歆惠) loses her job as a marketing and communications specialist and ends up working as a salesperson at Carrefour. Shy and awkward in the beginning, Sue learns how to make people buy things through a series of bizarre events and eventually becomes the alpha on a television shopping channel.
Photo courtesy of Hualien Media
Bai does a pretty nuanced job with her role, especially playing the awkwardness and introversion well, and you can still see traces of it even as she transitions into success. She enters a rivalry with Mei-hsiu (林美秀, Lin Mei-hsiu), who, despite being older, unattractive and loudmouthed, is also a wildly successful salesperson in her own right. Although their interaction is pretty formulaic as far as workplace battles go, Mei-hsiu provides a contrasting counterpart to Sue that does result in some laughs.
The plot itself flows well, with enough ups and downs and tension to keep the viewer engaged throughout the 129 minutes of running time — but the relationship development between the characters is pretty weak. For example, while Sue’s ridiculously sweet yet timid husband Kai (Nadow, 納豆) plays an important part in the first part of the film, there is almost no interaction to show between the two for a long stretch as their relationship supposedly deteriorates. Other characters go through abrupt attitude or personality changes that are crucial for the story but are simply hard to believe. Even the way Sue finds her final catharsis feels forced and unnatural. And the side love story between Jack, the gangster, and the person who turns out to be the villain resolved and explained in a disappointingly lazy fashion
Using a niche industry as a main theme is a good idea for a movie, but it seems that the production team put too much effort into stuffing too much into a film in an attempt to make it appealing on all fronts. That is the pitfall of trying to please all audiences — you often end up with a slickly-produced film that really is not bad — and while it is indeed enjoyable to watch, you can’t help but walk out thinking that it could have been much better.
Photo courtesy of Hualien Media
Photo courtesy of Hualien Media
Taiwan’s English education system is being pulled apart by three opposing forces. Bilingual Nation 2030 pulls students toward English and global communication. Artificial Intelligence (AI) readiness pulls them toward digital judgment, verification and AI-mediated work. But Taiwan’s old exam culture pulls them back toward memorization, grammar drills, timed reading and correct answers. If the education system keeps using old exams to define success, it risks producing graduates who are neither genuinely bilingual nor genuinely AI-ready, but trained for tasks machines can already perform. The first force is Bilingual Nation 2030. Launched in 2018, the policy aimed to “help Taiwan’s workforce connect
It seems every few days one bumps into one of those “real man” comments in which Taiwan is urged to “face reality” or similar, and “make a deal,” with the speaker implying that soon it will be too late. “Deal” advocates always present themselves as having a superior grip on reality, and the manly ability to make the “hard choice.” Their testosterone-laden language often echoes that of Taiwan sellout advocates. Note that such commentary always specifies a process (“make a deal, work with, make progress”), never the end state of what occupation by a violent authoritarian colonialist state will entail. In
“Taiwan’s Opposition Leader Comes to US With a Message Straight Out of Beijing” read a May 31 headline in the Wall Street Journal. Top US administration officials and members of Congress almost certainly read the WSJ, and if there was a bullet point takeaway that people in Washington should absorb ahead of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chair Cheng Li-wun’s (鄭麗文) arrival in DC on June 9, that headline is it. The last few columns have discussed this very topic, and the timing is not coincidental. While those top officials likely do not read the Taipei Times, judging by the number
As someone who normally steers clear of books with “transcendence” or “metaphysics” in their subtitles, this reviewer — a casual observer of local belief systems since the 1990s — found Fabian Graham’s Money God Temples in Taiwan a challenging read. Those who’ve only dipped their toes into temple culture will likely need to parse several sections with special care if they’re to keep up with the author, a British ethnographic researcher whose previous books have investigated religious practices among ethnic Chinese in Southeast Asia. This scholarly volume examines a facet of Taiwan’s religious landscape that didn’t exist a century ago, and
RSS