The Personals (1998)

• Year: 1998
• Released: 09 Oct 1999
• Country: Taiwan
• Adwords: 5 wins & 9 nominations
• IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0212423/
• Rotten Tomatoes: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_personals
• Metacritics:
• Available in: 720p, 1080p,
• Language: Mandarin
• MPA Rating: Not Rated
• Genre: Comedy, Drama, Romance
• Runtime: 104 min
• Writer: Kuo-Fu Chen, Shih-Chieh Chen, Yu-hui Chen
• Director: Kuo-Fu Chen
• Cast: Rene Liu, Wu Bai, Chen Chao-jung
• Keywords:

	7.2/10
	72/100

The Personals Storyline

An attractive and successful doctor places a personal ad in a newspaper to try to meet (and eventually marry) Mr. Right. A succession of blind dates ensues, featuring men who are lonely, desperate, dangerous and perverted.

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The Personals Movie Reviews

better than I thought

Based around dating and personal ads, there is plenty of humor in the subject matter. Throughout I was kept absorbed and intrigued by how similar our cultures are with respect to dating. There is not a tremendous amount of plot, but some is revealed/tacked on the end.

interesting, but it could have been better

When I saw the movie at the Ghent Film Festival, I didn’t know what to expect. The only thing I knew was that it was going to be the story of a woman who wants to get married and hopes to find the ideal man through a personal ad. A lot of time is spent on her sitting in a bar and talking to the men who answered the ad. This way the film wants to give us an idea of what life is like in Taiwan. Though this promises to be either very interesting or very boring, the result is that you are watching a film which can somehow move you, but at the same time you regret that it isn’t more than only slightly moving. As the story continues and we meet weirdo after weirdo (a lot of these men are fun to watch), we learn that she once had a lover who abandoned her to return to hi wife. There is a lot more to the story, but I wouldn’t like to spoil the ending. She regularly phones her ex-lover to tell him how much she misses him and how none of the men can compare to him, but he is never home so she tells her story to his answering machine. This second story is more intriguing than the first and it’s a pity that the story can’t fully grip you. But still, the movie is interesting and well worth its 7/10.

It’s a jungle out there

It’s a jungle out there… The Personals is a movie for anyone who hasn’t yet found what they’re looking for or who remembers how tough it can be to find it. Rene Liu plays an eye doctor who’s become disaffected with her present life and is craving something more— namely love and marriage. She’s attractive, has a good job, and a decent apartment. Up until now she has done everything she’s supposed to do, but it just hasn’t worked for her. She’s still alone. Now, she decides to take the extreme measure of advertising for a husband in the personals. The search leads her down the slippery slope of the modern dating scene whose universal quirkiness transcends the boundaries of all industrialized societies.

As a parade of diverse characters respond to the ad from obnoxious to bizarre to tragically pathetic (old coots, odd birds, pervs, nerds, frauds, conmen and salesmen), she starts to wonder if her standards are too high? And, watching the film you have to wonder…Do you have to settle for what’s there and what you may not want because of social expectations? In Hollywood’s hands, this little film would have become a relentless string of crude and infantile jokes and sight gags contrived to make us groan, but instead, this Taiwanese tale serves us up a quietly understated, poignantly humorous look at the dating scene. No matter where the film might have been set, you’re sure to hear a ring of truth to it. At one time or another, we’ve all been there— whether we like to admit it or not.

Might be a little slow paced for some, but, on the whole, a solid little film with which most people will find something to identify. And, whether shy, bewildered, desperate, panicked, or outraged, Liu’s performance is surprisingly sympathetic and often quite engaging.