Review of Vive L’Amour / 愛情萬歲, directed by Tsai Ming-liang

If you’re new here, and stumbled upon this blog through the mythical powers of the Internet, welcome! I know a lot of visitors to my website are people who randomly come upon this website through search engines like Google, but I also do have a lot of visitors who come back. Regardless: my name is Ashley, and I started this blog in order to keep track of everything I’m coming across in the world.

There was a period throughout 2025 where I was left unemployed, and I was so incredibly grateful to be in the financial situation where if I wanted to take a break and step away from the grind, I could. I didn’t intend for it to be as long as it was, as I was applying to over 300 jobs and couldn’t find a position. Not a great time to job hunt during one of one of the worst job markets in decades.

Anyways, I did find a job, but in the period where I was still freelancing and doing contract work, I spent a lot of my free time catching up on the movies, books, and television shows I’ve been meaning to watch. On my Goodreads alone, I have over two thousands books on my to-read list. I know and acknowledge I’ll never get to them all, but a girl can dream. We only have so much time in our lives though.

It’s the same with movies, but when I saw Vive L’Amour available to watch on Kanopy, I was in the right mood and decided to press play. In hindsight, I should have probably refreshed myself on what kind of movie this was before randomly deciding to jump right into it, but I had a good time with the movie. It helps that I was alone when watching this for sure.

Tsai Ming-liang is one of those directors I’ve been seriously meaning to watch ever since I was a freshman in college. I professor I genuinely loved would always say that he was one of her favorite directors. I had her for both Contemporary Korean Cinema and Contemporary Chinese Cinema, so I heard her say that a lot—it stuck with me after all those years, even when I’m long graduated and moved on to other things.

This was the day I finally watched one of this movies though. It only took seven years, but I finally got there! Let’s get into the review though before I start rambling a little too much in the introduction.

Two young men end up living inside of an unoccupied apartment a woman is trying to sell.

There are two protagonists in this movie. First is Hsiao-kang, who’s one of the two young men mentioned in the header above. He works as a salesman, although for these boxes that you put human remains inside of, and one day he spots something odd. Someone left behind a key in a door to a vacant apartment, and he decides to swipe it while no one is looking.

He keeps going into the apartment and eventually moves in there full time. It’s in that apartment he tries to kill himself, but when he starts hearing a noise from a different part of the apartment, he decides to not go through with his plan and investigate the noise. That’s how he meets Ah-jung.

Ah-jung became involved with the real estate agent, May Lin, while at a food court. He was sitting at the table next to her when they started eyeing each other up, and when she got up to leave, he continues to follow her. As he tracks her through the streets, she notices and lets him join her. She brings him to the apartment, where they have sex—turns out that’s the noise that Hsiao-kang was hearing.

It’s that night that Ah-jung also steals the key to the apartment and moves in. He doesn’t pick the same bedroom as Hsiao-kang, but when Hsiao-kang catches him have a make out session with a bowling ball, the two end up arguing over their now shared circumstances. May Lin has no idea they’re both there, so when she comes to the apartment to rest for a bit, they hide.

It’s after that, when they manage to sneak out of the apartment successfully, they become good buddies and live together in there. One night Hsiao-kang spots Ah-jung selling dresses outside of the apartment, and when he stops to observe this, May Lin also happens to pass by them. She does not see them together, but Ah-jung eventually tracks her down and again at a food stall.

She brings him back to the apartment again and they have sex, but there’s a twist this time: Hsiao-kang is under the bed. He wedged himself under there when they came back, and while he listens to them having sex, he starts deciding to join in on the action in his own little way. This scene is a bit much in terms of digesting that fact, but it works honestly with the overall vibe of the movie.

May Lin leaves Ah-jung behind the next morning while he’s still asleep. Hsiao-kang, still under the bed, comes out when he notices she’s gone, then lays down next to Ah-jung, who still has not woken up. He kisses Ah-jung on the lips and then moves away from him.

We then see May Lin go to her car, which doesn’t start. She wanders through a developing park, which is the modern day Daan Forest Park, before sitting down by a series of benches and starts crying. And that’s how the movie ends—with May Lin sitting there, alone, crying in the morning.

Overall Thoughts

I guess I can finally see why people love Tsai’s movies so much! This wasn’t too complex of a movie at the end of the day, but there were so many layers and nuance packed into the scenes that it felt like so much more than its small running time. I will say thought that this flew by for more—maybe because I was very invested in it?

I think if you’re wanting to start with Taiwanese cinema maybe don’t start with this one. I’m not used to Taiwanese cinema, but I am used to broader East Asian cinema. So this didn’t faze me at all, even though some of it should have. After working as a film critic and just jumping headfirst into weird movies generally, nothing really messes with me.

I did enjoy this film though! If you haven’t seen this already and are reading this in hopes of getting a cheat sheet out of watching it—you should probably just go watch the movie already.

I think movies are meant to be experienced, especially on a big screen, and you’re losing a core essence of the movie just reading about it. This is one of those movies that really needs to be watched, too.

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