Chris Knipp
10-22-2025, 08:15 PM
http://www.chrisknipp.com/images/%20nsli.jpg
MRS. AND MR. LI IN MISTRESS DISPELLER
ELIZABETH LO: MISTRESS DISPELLER (2025)
Scenes of a saved marriage
This odd artifact is elegant and peculiar. Somewhere in China quite urban - tall apartment buildings loom - you can hire a small outfit to "save" a marriage by arranging for a "mistress" to go away. This sequence of scenes purportedly use "real" people, a fiftyish man and his fiftyish wife (Mr. and Mrs. Li) and a younger "other" woman (known as "Fei Fei"). He has met "her" because he does business with her shipping company; she lives some distance away by train. In comes "Teacher Wang" (Wang Zhenxi) who meets with the wife, first, then with the others involved. It was never quite clear to me how this works. What is clear is that this is a culture where people believe marital infidelity can be "fixed", a little bit the way marriages can be brokered. We see that happens here too: there's a shot of available husbands presented as descriptions on paper hung outside on lines. The whole thing seemed a bit factitious. The husband and wife seem on pretty good terms to begin with, the husband pretty ready to give up the young woman. What is clear is that each scene is immaculately composed and exquisitely shot, bright-colored in the Chinese taste, a pleasure to the eye, giving the whole thing an ornate, refined quality, as if Lady Murasaki were translated into 21st century bourgeois Chinese. Several scenes involving massage, manicure, and hairdressing add to the feel of royal court amusements changed into modern middle class form.
First Mrs. Li meets with Teacher Wang and reveals her extreme anger and disappointment on discovering an apparent girlfriend's texts on Mr. Li's phone. The marriage is over, ruined, she complains. Wang has been referred by Mrs. Li's brother. He says this is the kind of couple that still holds hands and likes to play badminton together (and the badminton we see). Wang not only negotiates for the job but does the subsequent work. She poses as a new "friend" of Mrs. Li who comes with her to the badminton court to learn the game from the couple. (Badminton appears as a ritualized event, like everything here.) This leads to Wang and the two Li's at table, and Mrs. Li leaving Mr. Li with Wang for a chat in which she persuades him to admit he's somehow involved with a younger woman. Before long Wang and Mr. Li and Fei Fei are all three chatting at another table. This is like a jazzed-up version of a Hong Sangsoo film, with better aesthetics.
The scenes of Mistress Dispeller have rather the air of the demos by actors used in some kind of training program, and in this it's Wang Zhenxi who is the real pro. However both other women deliver some real emotion. Mrs. Li is seen weeping, no doubt in memory of the real almost-loss of her actual marriage. Strongest was Fei Fei, however, when she expresses her perhaps very real malaise. This woman has lost both additional income and an emotional involvement,and comes from a lonely place she has had to go back to. The paradox is that the scenes aren't "real," but somehow the story told is true and the feelings are authentic. But as a male viewer I was perhaps most affected by sympathy for Mr. Li, a man who has lost his youthful spark and tried to get it back by an age-old method.
We can be glad the marriage is saved. There is a child (a young daughter of whom we learn little and never see), and, after all, here's the thing: Mr. Li and Fei Fei were never a wild sexual fling, probably more like a polite sugar daddy thing. The trouble, though, is that the scenes, though with "real" people depicting their "real" lives, are nonetheless artificial recreations and due to the additional artificiality of the whole "mistress dispelling" process here where there's never very strong resistance, it all feels as seen at one remove. But the visuals are cunningly crafted, the cinematography beautiful.
It's suggested that while Mr. Li and Fei Fei are never again to meet, the two ladies might cultivate a kind of friendship, like rivals turned allies in some tale by Choderlos de Laclos. And this conceit is, appropriately, realized or hinted at in a scene where the two ladies meet together both wearing traditional Chinese dress. This is not wholly a surprise because it's been clear from the start that Mrs. Li is an elegant women - and now Fei Fei has had her hair cut in bangs to match Mrs. Li's. Memorable in cinematic terms, this moment underlines the artificiality of the entire film. It is this that makes it, odd, exquisite bauble that it is, less effective than filmmaker Lo's previous documentary the 2020 Stray (https://www.chrisknipp.com/writing/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=4610), the POV account of the life of a she-dog wandering the streets of Istanbul, which deserves a place among major canine pics, perhaps along with Ben Leonberg's new canine-POV horror flick, Good Boy. (https://www.chrisknipp.com/writing/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=5679)
Mistress Dispeller, 94 mins., premiered at Venice Sept. 2, 2025 and was shown at many other US and international film festivals including Toronto, Zurich, Miami, DOC NYC, Sydney, Munich, and Melbourne. Limited US theatrical release begins Oct. 22, 2025 (NYC) and Oct. 24 (LA), with limited national rollout to follow. An Oscilloscope release.
MRS. AND MR. LI IN MISTRESS DISPELLER
ELIZABETH LO: MISTRESS DISPELLER (2025)
Scenes of a saved marriage
This odd artifact is elegant and peculiar. Somewhere in China quite urban - tall apartment buildings loom - you can hire a small outfit to "save" a marriage by arranging for a "mistress" to go away. This sequence of scenes purportedly use "real" people, a fiftyish man and his fiftyish wife (Mr. and Mrs. Li) and a younger "other" woman (known as "Fei Fei"). He has met "her" because he does business with her shipping company; she lives some distance away by train. In comes "Teacher Wang" (Wang Zhenxi) who meets with the wife, first, then with the others involved. It was never quite clear to me how this works. What is clear is that this is a culture where people believe marital infidelity can be "fixed", a little bit the way marriages can be brokered. We see that happens here too: there's a shot of available husbands presented as descriptions on paper hung outside on lines. The whole thing seemed a bit factitious. The husband and wife seem on pretty good terms to begin with, the husband pretty ready to give up the young woman. What is clear is that each scene is immaculately composed and exquisitely shot, bright-colored in the Chinese taste, a pleasure to the eye, giving the whole thing an ornate, refined quality, as if Lady Murasaki were translated into 21st century bourgeois Chinese. Several scenes involving massage, manicure, and hairdressing add to the feel of royal court amusements changed into modern middle class form.
First Mrs. Li meets with Teacher Wang and reveals her extreme anger and disappointment on discovering an apparent girlfriend's texts on Mr. Li's phone. The marriage is over, ruined, she complains. Wang has been referred by Mrs. Li's brother. He says this is the kind of couple that still holds hands and likes to play badminton together (and the badminton we see). Wang not only negotiates for the job but does the subsequent work. She poses as a new "friend" of Mrs. Li who comes with her to the badminton court to learn the game from the couple. (Badminton appears as a ritualized event, like everything here.) This leads to Wang and the two Li's at table, and Mrs. Li leaving Mr. Li with Wang for a chat in which she persuades him to admit he's somehow involved with a younger woman. Before long Wang and Mr. Li and Fei Fei are all three chatting at another table. This is like a jazzed-up version of a Hong Sangsoo film, with better aesthetics.
The scenes of Mistress Dispeller have rather the air of the demos by actors used in some kind of training program, and in this it's Wang Zhenxi who is the real pro. However both other women deliver some real emotion. Mrs. Li is seen weeping, no doubt in memory of the real almost-loss of her actual marriage. Strongest was Fei Fei, however, when she expresses her perhaps very real malaise. This woman has lost both additional income and an emotional involvement,and comes from a lonely place she has had to go back to. The paradox is that the scenes aren't "real," but somehow the story told is true and the feelings are authentic. But as a male viewer I was perhaps most affected by sympathy for Mr. Li, a man who has lost his youthful spark and tried to get it back by an age-old method.
We can be glad the marriage is saved. There is a child (a young daughter of whom we learn little and never see), and, after all, here's the thing: Mr. Li and Fei Fei were never a wild sexual fling, probably more like a polite sugar daddy thing. The trouble, though, is that the scenes, though with "real" people depicting their "real" lives, are nonetheless artificial recreations and due to the additional artificiality of the whole "mistress dispelling" process here where there's never very strong resistance, it all feels as seen at one remove. But the visuals are cunningly crafted, the cinematography beautiful.
It's suggested that while Mr. Li and Fei Fei are never again to meet, the two ladies might cultivate a kind of friendship, like rivals turned allies in some tale by Choderlos de Laclos. And this conceit is, appropriately, realized or hinted at in a scene where the two ladies meet together both wearing traditional Chinese dress. This is not wholly a surprise because it's been clear from the start that Mrs. Li is an elegant women - and now Fei Fei has had her hair cut in bangs to match Mrs. Li's. Memorable in cinematic terms, this moment underlines the artificiality of the entire film. It is this that makes it, odd, exquisite bauble that it is, less effective than filmmaker Lo's previous documentary the 2020 Stray (https://www.chrisknipp.com/writing/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=4610), the POV account of the life of a she-dog wandering the streets of Istanbul, which deserves a place among major canine pics, perhaps along with Ben Leonberg's new canine-POV horror flick, Good Boy. (https://www.chrisknipp.com/writing/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=5679)
Mistress Dispeller, 94 mins., premiered at Venice Sept. 2, 2025 and was shown at many other US and international film festivals including Toronto, Zurich, Miami, DOC NYC, Sydney, Munich, and Melbourne. Limited US theatrical release begins Oct. 22, 2025 (NYC) and Oct. 24 (LA), with limited national rollout to follow. An Oscilloscope release.