“Mistress Dispeller” is a truly surprising and even revolutionary documentary. It captures shame in real time and dissects something Americans have in common with Chinese: social mobility and infidelity. And yet, there is also a learning, an insight, that can only come when people are honest.
In the very beginning, we are told on a black screen that the participants in this documentary agreed to be filmed before this project began. They were told it would be a film about modern love in China. True enough, but misleading. The big surprise is that at the end of the filming, now in obvious full disclosure, they consent again. That’s surprising because throughout the filming they want to keep their humiliation, betrayal, and clandestine lives secret.
Here’s the story. A middle-aged husband with a recessive chin and spritely wife in good shape starts an affair with a beautiful young woman with long, luxurious black hair who is attracted by his kindness. Quizzical but not revolutionary.
The wife finds out about the beautiful young girl and hires an undercover operator, called a mistress dispeller, to end the relationship. The dispeller acts like a sympathetic friend and inserts herself into everyone’s lives, including the mistress’s.
The wife is justifiably irate and is the one who hires the dispeller. But I’m not sure the husband, who covers himself and then peeks out at the camera when his secret affair is exposed, knew his double life was going to be exposed. The mistress, who is a motorcycle delivery person, seems truly in the dark until the very end.
Mistress Dispelling is a growing business in China. Fees can start at $118 per hour, but easily mount up to more than $10,000 for a year. A dispeller, a quaint title, is generally hired by a wife through one of the hundreds of companies advertising online. The dispeller must infiltrate into the love triangle – the lives of the husband, wife, and mistress, and gain each member’s trust.
For the purpose of this film, the director/cinematographer, Elizabeth Lo, after interviewing many dispellers, hired Wang Zhenxi who had a record of being loved by the people with whom she worked. She has an uncanny sense of where each person is coming from and why the situation is the way it is. But most importantly, her job is to convince all three that what they really want in life is a reunification with their family and, for the mistress, a fresh start with an unencumbered suitor. But in the case of the Li family, examined in this film, we are wondering if she can work her magic this time. Mr. Li’s life has become reinvigorated, and leaving Fei Fei, his mistress, would be a great personal sacrifice.
The film begins with the passionate music of Puccini’s “Madame Butterfly” and progresses to the French indie band Odez to convey what the director, Elizabeth Lo, has written is “the push and pull between duty, desire, connection, and conformity.”
At the end of the project, Lo showed the film to all three subjects to ensure they fully understood what they had given their consent for. They were even given the option to re-consent or drop out. Because they all hoped this film would be helpful to others, and because they were assured the film would not be released in China, they all gave their consent. I suspect Wang’s fee was also dropped. But this kind of cinema verite, this intimate raw shame on the big screen published with permission, is truly revolutionary.
Also significant to me was Lo’s nod to the increasing political tensions between the US and China. She has written in the press notes: “… it was important to me as a Hong Kong citizen to make a film that bridges rather than divides. By investigating an experience that is at once universally familiar and uniquely specific to contemporary China, I hope “Mistress Dispeller” asks what it means to hurt, to heal, to fear loneliness, and to love in the 21st century.”
Rating: 10/10
Credits
Director/Cinematographer: Elizabeth Lo
Executive Producers: Constance Wu and Justine Suzanne Jones
Writers: Elizabeth Lo and Charlotte Munch Bengtsen
Producers: Emma D. Miller, Elizabeth Lo and Maggie Li
Featuring: Mr.Li, Mrs.Li, Fei Fei and Wang Zhenxi
Released: Oct. 24, 2025
Website: https://www.mistressdispellerfilm.com/
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