‘Mistress Dispeller’ Review: Elizabeth Lo Observantly Follows a Chinese Marriage in a Fidelity Crisis
variety.comTomris Laffly Some attend couples’ therapy to save their marriage after a case of infidelity. Others appoint a “mistress dispeller,” a shrewd for-hire professional who embeds themselves with the duo (and the “other woman”) for a few months, both to break up the affair and repair the damaged bonds of the domestic union.
At least that’s how it seems to work in China lately, as the title cards in Elizabeth Lo’s elegantly haunting and strangely romantic “Mistress Dispeller” reveal.
A unassumingly experimental love story, an aching multi-character study and a cultural portrait with an undercurrent of sadness, Lo’s second feature documentary offers an intimate look at China’s booming “love industry” of the last decade and increasing instances of adultery — not through colorful statistical charts or lengthy interviews with fancy sociologists, but by trailing an authentic account of a mistress dispelling.
If this all sounds juicily salacious, you might want to recalibrate your expectations. What Lo has in store here is a lot more thoughtful than the stereotypical playbook of a spicy love triangle.
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