EXCLUSIVE: Elizabeth Lo’s acclaimed documentary Mistress Dispeller, about a unique service in China aimed at wives whose husbands are cheating on them, is set to premiere on the Criterion Channel on Tuesday, Feb. 24.
The film produced by Lo, Emma D. Miller, and Maggie Li earned a place this year on the Oscar shortlist for Best Documentary Feature after winning awards around the world, including the Golden Frog at the Cameraimage festival in Poland, the Gold Hugo at the Chicago International Film Festival, the Maysles Brothers Award at the Denver Film Festival, and the Authors Under 40 Award for Best Director at the 2024 Venice Film Festival, where Mistress Dispeller premiered. Lo also earned a Directors Guild of America nomination for the documentary.
“In China, a new industry has emerged devoted to helping couples stay married in the face of infidelity,” notes a description of the film. “Wang Zhenxi is part of this growing profession, a ‘mistress dispeller’ who is hired to maintain the bonds of marriage—and break up affairs—by any means necessary. Offering strikingly intimate access to private dramas usually hidden behind closed doors, Elizabeth Lo’s spellbinding documentary follows a real, unfolding case of infidelity as Teacher Wang attempts to bring a couple back from the edge of crisis. Their story shifts our sympathies between husband, wife, and mistress to explore the ways emotion, pragmatism and cultural norms collide to shape romantic relationships in contemporary China.”
Teacher Wang boasts a 99 percent success rate in her work, though perhaps that deserves an asterisk.
“I don’t think there’s any data or rules that are regulating this burgeoning industry,” Lo told us at the Camden International Film Festival in Maine, where Mistress Dispeller screened after its Venice debut. “But I do think her success rate comes from the fact that she believes no matter what happens by the end of a case, it’s what’s best for each of those clients, whether they stay together or not. But she does say people who are so motivated to come to her to save their marriage, there’s such a willpower there that usually it succeeds.”
The film has earned widespread praise for its intimate tone and cinematic quality – elements that resulted from the director’s decision to lock down the camera for scenes inside the home of the married, but troubled, couple.
“In terms of methodology of filming, it was very much an observational documentary despite the appearance of the static camera and the composed frames,” Lo explained in an interview for Deadline’s Doc Talk podcast. “I think that just has to do with if you film for hours with people and you’re kind of selecting the best moments, that’s what you see in the film. But going in there was very much this intention to film it. A combination of my references personally were Mike Leigh’s Secrets & Lies, where you have that seven minute-long take of Hortense and her mother having that confrontation — you’re seeing their conversation unfold in real time and all the micro expressions and gestures and words that are exchanged and not exchanged.”
Lo continued, “I wanted audiences to be able to experience that too, as much as possible, with static cameras just above tabletops of two people engaging over a conflict in a way where they have to repress their emotions and they have to act their best selves because of the camera’s presence. They’re aware that they’re in a film, but at the same time truly trying to connect or disconnect with each other. And that was the intention behind how I filmed it, the aesthetic intention, but also on a practical level, having the camera be very fixed allowed me to walk away from the camera in most of the scenes that you see in the film. I would hit ‘record’ once I found out where they were sitting and then leave the room so that they could be as unselfconscious as possible despite the camera being there, to not feel like another set of eyes watching them as they’re going through such sensitive and potentially painful moments in their lives or self-revealing moments in their lives.”
Watch the trailer for Mistress Dispeller here:
English (US) ·