by Nick Taylor
Did you know there’s a new romance industry in China called professional mistress dispellers? You should, since our very own Claudio Alves wrote about it last year at TIFF following its premiere at the 81st Venice Film Festival, but if you don’t then allow me to elaborate. Mistress dispellers are hired by cheated-on wives to be inserted in their lives and discreetly end the husband’s affair, without him or his mistress knowing exactly what’s happening. These folks position themselves as new friends or coworkers, employing psychologically manipulative tactics over the course of many months to coax information from each member of the love triangle so they can better dissolve this love triangle. If they do their job right, a dispeller can end an affair without creating any ripples around her identity. It’s one of many modern forms of matchmaking and marital reinforcement taking place in China and around the world.
Few films offer a hook as tantalizing as Mistress Dispeller, Elizabeth Lo’s documentary about one such case of infidelity being infiltrated by Teacher Wang. Miraculously, the juicy premise leads to an even-handed study of all three members of this love triangle, the motives of infidelity, and the processes of maintaining a relationship . . . .
In its opening credits, Mistress Dispeller promises startlingly intimate access to the lives of its three main subjects as Teacher Wang (herself the fourth subject) weaves her way through their lives. Mrs. Li, her husband, and his mistress Fei Fei gave their consent to be filmed from the earliest stages of their involvement, though of course the latter two didn’t know the actual purpose of the documentary. They were told the film would be about dating and love in modern China, which is about as honest as you can get without telling the truth. Lo has described the difficulty of maintaining subjects through the years-long filming process. At least two other parties revoked their consent at different stages of the dispelling, leading Lo to center just one marriage rather than attempting to snapshot multiple couples throughout the dispelling process as she had potentially considered.
Scenes were filmed with cameras purposefully placed in a room and with as few crew members present as possible, both to create an air of comfort for the subjects to be as open as Teacher Wang needed them to be and so no one behind the scenes could accidentally give their true purpose away. You don’t feel like a fly on the wall so much as sitting at the table with these people, silently watching their dirty laundry be aired out before it’s ruffled, smoothed, and neatly folded away. It's uncomfortable, and some viewers may consider it too ethically compromised to sit and watch it. Once the final edit for Mistress Dispeller was completed, it was screened for the four protagonists before asking one last time if they were comfortable with the film they actually starred in being released. They gave their consent, and the Mistress Dispeller we know and love is out in the world.
As Mrs. Li says during her first consultation with the dispeller, “I can imagine an affair happening in any family. Except for my own. Isn’t that embarrassing?” It’s all the more remarkable to see how fully her embarrassment is received with respect, empathy, and complexity. Teacher Wang and Elizabeth Lo earn Mrs. Li’s total confidence in their ability to pull off this dispelling and to portray the process with great sensitivity. Lo is respectful of Mrs. Li’s emotions, not just her shame but her desire to hold on to her husband, all the untangling she’s doing of her longstanding affections and new pains. The film’s attention moves organically from one member of this love triangle to the next as Teacher Wang systematically unpacks the specific dynamics at play, in order to best extricate the other woman from this equation.
If we can take Mistress Dispeller’s sympathy for Mrs. Li as something of a given, it’s remarkable to see the same humanist lens and filmmaking rigor applied to Mr. Li and especially Fei Fei. Teacher Wang understands the mistress as fundamentally the saddest person in a love triangle, clinging to an unsatisfying love due to a lack of self-worth. I don’t know if the film spends the most time with Fei Fei, but her journey is the most significant in terms of Mistress Dispeller’s artistic goals and in Teacher Wang’s mission to extricate this young woman from someone else’s marriage. The most important part is helping the mistress choose to let go and seek out a better life for herself. A final conversation, burdened with as much mythic weight as the fictional tet-a-tets between royals in Mary Queen of Scots, shows us how Fei Fei has taken these lessons to heart. It’s an oddly hopeful conclusion, a declaration of a new life made with the certainty of a hairdresser’s scissors saving some unfortunate bangs.
It’s a tremendous achievement that Mistress Dispeller is able to present such an unambiguous goal in dissolving an affair while still allowing for these deeply personal ambiguities, encouraging the audience to scrutinize what they’re watching as deeply as these characters study each other. I love an early scene of Mr. and Mrs. Li playing badminton against each other, filmed at a distance so they’re both always in the frame together, allowing you to project any number of feelings between them during the game. Is she playing more viciously than normal as a way to release her anger at him, or does she always go this hard? Is his poor performance reflective of his disinterest in his wife? What’s their normal dynamic like?
Furthermore, what does restoring the Li marriage look like? Lo bravely foregoes any romantic notion of Teacher Wang’s mission or either of Mr. Li’s relationships. Nor does she provide any image of how Mr. and Mrs. Li regard each other by the end of the film, though there’s plenty to indicate the Li’s and Fei Fei have heeded her advice on how to better improve and fulfill themselves. Instead, Mistress Dispeller contextualizes Teacher Wang’s work as one of many industries in China designed to find and sustain couplehood for any number of reasons - love, security, obligation, a dubious sense of self-worth. No one wants to be alone. It’s noteworthy how Mrs. Li’s initial plea for why she needs a dispeller is focused nearly as much on her and her husband’s standing in their community, their reputation, as it does his betrayal. What’s the recidivism rate for marriages who hire a dispeller?
Still, it's hard not to trust things have improved for all three of these people based solely on Teacher Wang's assuredness throughout the whole ordeal. She's so pragmatic in every step of her mission, so perceptive about how people operate in general and the desires behind why someone would seek out an illicit relationship. Trying to grasp the logistics of her plans is about as mind-boggling as director Lo’s undercover filmmaking. As Fei Fei says, “Her influence is like a gentle drizzle, soft and soundless”. The harmoniousness of these women’s guiding hands - their intelligence, their blending of human compassion and utter professionalism towards their work - is as sublime a pairing as anything you’ll see in a documentary or narrative film this year. Their insights into this particular relationship, and the reverberations felt in the human condition writ large, are marvelous to behold.
Mistress Dispeller is currently in limited theatrical release and will expand this Friday.
