‘Mistress Dispeller’ Review: Elizabeth Lo Observantly Follows a Chinese Marriage in a Fidelity Crisis

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. That much is evident in the shots that bookend this compassionate film — two women, surveying their own visages in different hairdresser mirrors. There is sorrow on the first woman’s resolute face at the start, with tears gently trickling down her cheeks. Stylishly dressed and sporting a modern, unfussy pixie cut, she is Mrs. Li, married to a reserved man of few words. She knows that Mr. Li has been cheating on her with the young Fei Fei, the aforementioned second woman at the other salon.

It’s an expressive choice for Lo to mark the beginning and near-end of her film with a hairdresser’s chair, giving both forlorn women in love with the same man their turn in it. Lo seems to know that time often stops when we take those strangely therapeutic seats across from a mirror, cuing a quiet self-evaluation of our looks, desires and even our entire lives. In the case of middle-aged Mrs. Li, she can’t help but face the pain and weight of her husband’s betrayal in that moment. As for the surprisingly conventional Fei Fei, she possibly wonders what her life would look like without her lover’s enabling presence and support.

It is no spoiler to reveal that the affair will come to an end by the conclusion of “Mistress Dispeller,” as that is the whole point of this unusual, stranger-than-fiction custom in China. But Lo’s film is all about what happens until then anyway, following the methods of Teacher Wang Zhenx, who works, alongside her associate, as one of those in-demand dispellers with hundreds of clients. Hired by Mrs. Li, she acts as our eyes and ears into the couple’s marriage, while she introduces herself to both Mr. Li and Fei Fei under false pretenses.

Slowly, she begins to disclose the cracks in everyone’s hearts, souls and relationships. While hers is a fascinating process deeply foreign to most cultures, what she stumbles upon through it is often startlingly familiar. On the marital front, there are universal complaints such as, “You didn’t even notice my new hairdo.” On the extramarital front, there are confessions as banal as, “It makes me feel alive” — the same sentence that every married human being who has launched into an affair has probably uttered at some point.

And that Lo’s triumph with “Mistress Dispeller,” showing us that as far apart as our customs and cultures might be, the people that dwell in their margins are astonishingly alike. On that note, there are no absolute villains or heroes in this modest tale, filmed with the utmost (and renewed) consent of everyone involved.

These are instead ordinary folks, like the heartbroken Mrs. Li, wondering where her husband’s heart has been lately in one scene, unable to stop herself from lovingly praising his cooking in the next. There is also Mr. Li, who both genuinely loves his wife and all the things they share (they especially like playing badminton together), but is unable to give up the excitement and sense of purpose that Fei Fei brings into his life. Fei Fei, meanwhile, knows that if she is out of the picture, she’ll ultimately be the one who ends up alone in her little apartment. This last point is especially emphasized by Teacher Wang. She’s done this enough times to know the mistress will take the hardest hit in the aftermath.

You wouldn’t expect anything less from the filmmaker of “Stray,” the poignant 2020 doc that soulfully navigated the lives of Istanbul’s many strays, canine and human. But it’s still fascinating to witness what Lo taps into here, building a link between China’s thriving economy and the sense of freedom (and, sometimes, unhappiness) that growth has brought to nuclear families. Throughout this association, Teacher Wang gradually morphs into something a lot more than a marital sleuth. In due course, we see her like a Chinese Esther Perel, a relationship therapist tasked with getting severely private people to recognize their true feelings, amid a culture that hasn’t necessary trained them for “self-care” or “me-time,” or to talk about matters that are still taboo in some parts of the country.

Lo’s delicate camerawork mixes intensely long takes and often revealingly invasive close-ups, with calming nature shots frequently juxtaposed against alienating urban landscapes, while a melancholic soundtrack includes Puccini and Saint-Saëns. “Mistress Dispeller” culminates in a beautiful final act, as everyone — the audience included — walks away with something rewarding and reflective from the time they’ve spent with Teacher Wang. Commitments can be renewed, bruised egos heal, and every end brings a new beginning.