Love Scam: Take 2
Esther Liu Rises above the material and drags a rote, adult coming-of-age story with her.
Salli
Director: Lien Chien-hung • Writers: Lien Chien-hung, Essay Liu
Starring: Esther Liu, Austin Lin, Tang Yung-hsu, Lee Ying-hung
Taiwan / France • 1hrs 44mins
Opens Hong Kong Feb 27 • IIB
Grade: B
Dating apps in Asia are having a moment. In Salli | 莎莉, ancient, decrepit, she-might-as-well-crawl-in-a-grave 38-year-old chicken farmer Hui-jun (Esther Liu Pin-yan, Light the Night, My Best Friend’s Breakfast) finally gets a chance to spread her wings and find out who she is, what she’s worth and what it is she really wants from life after her visiting niece, Xin-Ru (Tang Yung-hsu), creates her a profile on a Tinder-type thing where she is “Salli”. But this being 2025 of course there’s a chance Hui-jun’s fascinating “Paris match” (see what I did there?), Martin, is a scam artist. Whether or not he is, and more importantly whether or not Hui-jun gives a shit, is the larger head-scratcher, as it was in Ho Miu-ki’s Love Lies. There’s a tone of wise acceptance the vaguely unhappy middle-aged woman in Ho’s film comes to that rings truer than the conclusion does in writer-director Lien Chien-hung’s by-the-numbers coming-of-age drama for a grown woman. The whole thing would be nearly unbearable were it not for Liu, who even when Lien and co-writer Essay Liu saddle Hui-jun with the trappings of being an idiot, keeps the story engaging (even if we know where it’s headed most of the time) and Hui-jun inherently likeable.
But she has a cute dog
Hui-jun lives in a rural Taiwan, helping her younger brother Wei-hong (Austin Lin Po-hung, I WeirDO, Marry My Dead Body) raise the chickens that are likely bound for his Taipei restaurant one day. He’s on verge of getting married, which naturally inspires their pushy auntie (Yang Yi-lin) to do a feng shui reading and then determine Hui-jun’s unmarried status is a bad omen and she can’t come to his wedding. It’s in this despondent mood that Hui-jun picks up her phone – just to see – and finds Martin and almost immediately falls under his spell. Or into a trap, as Wei-hong, the emotionally fragile Xin-Ru and local farmer John Deere (Lee Ying-hung, look he’s got a John Deere tractor and his name never registers) see it. They worry even more when Hui-jun takes a pile of cash from the bank – naturally at Martin’s request – packs up and heads to Paris on a tour to meet mystery man and live happily ever after.
There’s a hilariously romantic vision of Europe at play in Salli, a view of France as imagined through rose-coloured glasses and free of labour actions. Without that, however, Hui-jun’s growth and self-discovery don’t happen, so we’ll let it go. She meets a fellow traveller (Lee Lieh), an older woman with no husband but loads of confidence and a palpable sense of personal peace (these two tearing around Paris is your movie), and she takes her advice about lingering. As soon as she meets the Airbnb host her mentor sets her up with it’s all decadent drugs (okay, it’s weed), free sex and 24/7 house parties with hot young French people who don’t care she’s 40 and single. She also finds app matches beyond Martin – like Michel (Charles Lelaure), a handsome, sophisticated gentleman who puts out on the first date.
Salli is a harmless kind of romantic fantasy, and a family drama that lets its main character get her jollies with no lasting consequences vis-à-vis the rest of the family – and it sends a strange kind of retrograde message. Hui-jun gets whatever it is that’s bothering her out of her system and then turns around and happily goes back to the dull chicken farm, and (the story suggests) takes up with John Deere. She learns her place and, rebellion complete, settles back into it. And of course her long-term happiness pivots on securing a man. On top of that, Hui-jun’s decision to stay with her chickens is rooted in the fact Xin-Ru clearly needs her, as she’s the mother figure the teen lost and a more critical bond than the one she has with her dad, Hui-jun and Wei-hong’s other brother (Jacko Chiang Wei-wen). Now, that sounds ghastly, but it’s unlikely Lien was trying to tell the women of Taiwan to shut the hell up and get their asses back in the kitchen. Salli is too good-natured for that kind of vitriol and, once again, ladies and gentlemen Esther Liu. Liu is sensual, delightful and delightfully off the leash, which Lien and cinematographer Ching Yao-liao capture in warm, lush, sunny images and without whom the film would dissolve into a pro-tradwife mess.