Synopsis
Director: Elizabeth Lo
Producers: Emma D. Miller, Elizabeth Lo, Maggie Li
China, U.S., 94 min
One of the most acclaimed documentaries of the year and winner of over a dozen festival awards, this deeply fascinating family portrait follows the emotional journey of Mrs. Li, an upper-middle-class Chinese woman who learns her husband is having an affair. Desperate to save her marriage, Mrs. Li hires a “mistress dispeller” —a crafty young female professional named Wang Zhenxi—to repair her love life. Unfolding in almost real time, Mistress Dispeller follows “Teacher” Wang as she clandestinely befriends both the cheating husband and the mistress, all part of her intricate master plan to restore the family’s equilibrium. “A spellbindingly intimate tale” (POV Magazine), this exquisitely photographed docu-drama is “a profound and searching panorama of loneliness and partnership,” (IndieWire) and a “highly effective [and] delicately realized examination of marriage in modern China (Screen Daily).
