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Mistress Dispeller, Chinese documentary at Venice 2024, sheds light on peculiar profession
- Documentary Mistress Dispeller sheds light on a peculiar profession in China, one involving saving marriages by ending extramarital affairs
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Over the past decade, China has seen the rise of a peculiar profession: the mistress dispeller.
Hired by clients with unfaithful husbands or wives, a dispeller’s job is simple in theory but complicated in practice: to break up the cheating partner and their lover so that the marriage can stay intact without the presence of a third party.
It is a phenomenon increasingly evident in Chinese cities, where the growth of the economy is seemingly mirrored in the increasing rates of infidelity.
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Yet, while affairs happen all over the world, hiring professional dispellers – who can charge the equivalent of over US$10,000 – is a practice specific to mainland China. Bound by familial duty and unnerved by the enduring stigma of divorce, scorned partners, typically women, turn to dispellers as a last resort.
Hong Kong filmmaker Elizabeth Lo takes a tender, empathetic look at this profession in Mistress Dispeller, a film that follows a mistress-dispelling case from beginning to end.
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Set to receive its world premiere in the 2024 Venice International Film Festival’s Orizzonti section on September 2, the film is Lo’s second feature-length documentary; Stray, about Istanbul’s stray dogs and Syrian refugees, was her first.
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