Hong Kong-based documentary filmmaker Elizabeth Lo captivated audiences in 2020 with “Stray”, a poetic commentary on urban misery describing the lives of stray dogs wandering in Istanbul. With her sophomore effort “Mistress Dispeller,” the director now shifts her gaze from animal to human, delving into the private turmoil of a couple on the brink of collapse. While appealing to universally relatable feelings, such as fear of inadequacy, yearning for acceptance, and the unattainable wish to rewind life, it does so within a quite specific cultural framework: That of hypercompetitive, status-obsessed PRC. Yet, despite Lo’s claims of unscripted authenticity, the documentary leaves viewers questioning how much of its intricate story was orchestrated.
Mistress Dispeller is screening at Black Movie
Set in Luoyang, a city renowned for its imperial past and crimson peonies, “Mistress Dispeller” documents the hardships of Mrs. Lee, who found out about her husband’s affair with a younger woman, Fei Fei. Desperate to salvage her marriage, she turns to Ms. Wang, a professional “mistress dispeller” who, for a non-neglectable fee, will take care of warding off her love rival. Posing as a family friend, Wang infiltrates the couple’s life, up to the point of confronting Fei Fei. But preventing the situation from a legal escalation proves no easy task.
After a few years dedicated to scouting and fieldwork in mainland China, with many of the involved couples eventually abandoning the project in order to safeguard their privacy, Lo luckily managed to persuade the Lees to open their house and heart’s doors, and get a first-hand testimony of this increasingly popular service. Following Ms. Wang’s modus operandi, which entails approaching the unfaithful husband, building trust with the mistress, and orchestrating a painful but necessary separation, the film unravels like a psychological drama, with tension simmering beneath its ostensibly calm surface.
In this respect, Lo’s direction sure has the merit of bringing measure and rhythm to a subject hard to film. Her observational style captures moments of raw emotion with minimal interference, lending an air of authenticity. As a result, “Mistress Dispeller” does well to show the gap between cinematic ideals of romantic love – as perpetuated by Hollywood movies – and the pragmatic reality of relationships. Through the lens of the camera, love emerges not as an ethereal, eternal force, but as a fragile cultural construct shaped by duty and compromise. To emphasize said gap, the vibrancy of Luoyang streets is juxtaposed to the austere interiors where the drama unfolds. The editing also intersperses key developments with footage of small talk and seemingly insignificant events happening in the city, which hint at how everybody appears entangled in this marriage-induced paranoia – whether they already have a partner, or are struggling to find one.
That being said, the film’s credibility as a sociological document is undermined by its potential staging. Wang’s witty remarks often feel rehearsed and too well-timed, while the openness of Mr. Lee and Fei Fei in discussing the ins and outs of their adulterous relationship stretches credulity. Not to imply that a documentary should be nothing but a raw recording of what goes on in front of the camera and that no creative intervention is allowed, but Lo’s claims on the nature of her movie do not seem to align with what happens on screen.
Ultimately, “Mistress Dispeller” still succeeds in providing a compelling glimpse into a country where traditional Confucian values have clashed with the unprecedented prosperity brought about by its rampaging liberalization, initiated by Deng Xiaoping back in the 70s. In fact, Wang’s most peculiar occupation is but a fraction of a broader phenomenon, involving State-sponsored matchmaking campaigns and dating apps engineered to prioritize profit gain over personal preferences. A phenomenon whose scale most viewers would have hardly grasped, if it was not for this documentary.
