Mistress Dispeller follows Wang Zhenxi, a Henan-based 'mistress dispeller' who earns a living intervening in marriages to remove extraneous lovers. Wang befriends, persuades and deceives husbands' lovers to end affairs, aiming to restore couples and 'set free' mistresses who feel undeserving of complete love. The presentation adopts a restrained, non-judgmental tone that renders all protagonists—Mr and Mrs Li, the mistress Fei Fei, and Teacher Wang—as sympathetic and fully rounded. The practice has emerged in China over the past decade and appears culturally confounding to many Western viewers.
Not long into Mistress Dispeller, a quietly jaw-dropping new documentary from director Elizabeth Lo, the film's eponymous character lays out her thesis for ridding marriages of troublesome extra lovers. When someone becomes a mistress, she says, it's because they feel they don't deserve complete love. She's the one who needs our help the most. Wang Zhenxi, a mistress dispeller based in north-central China's Henan province, is one of a growing number of self-styled professionals who earn a living by intervening in people's marriages
I was looking for a love story set in China, says Lo, speaking from Hong Kong. I thought it would be really interesting to [explore] the peripheral gaze of a mistress. We see Mrs Li storm out in faux anger at her husband's cooking in a ploy to leave him alone with the dispeller Lo's first feature, the award-winning Stray, followed abandoned dogs on the streets of Istanbul. It was praised for its gentle, non-judgmental perspective on human (and canine) relationships.
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