MISTRESS DISPELLER - Mark Reviews Movies

Mistress Dispeller,

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Review by Mark Dujsik | October 22, 2025

It's a well-known fact of documentary filmmaking that the presence of a camera will, in some way, change the way people behave. One watches Mistress Dispeller, about someone who professionally quashes extramarital affairs in China, with that reality in mind, too. Seeing these people talk or avoid talking about this affair and its effect on everyone involved, we can sense that the subjects aren't saying everything they want to say in the way they want to say it.

Director Elizabeth Lo makes certain the audience knows all of this footage has been captured with all of the participants agreeing to be filmed. They agreed before the process began, and they once again gave their consent to be in this documentary after filming completed. How much of the more difficult stuff, then, had to be left out of the final edit, because someone or other wasn't happy with how they came across in the movie? How many of the really trying, challenging, and uncomfortable conversations never happened in the first place, simply because the people in front of the camera didn't want to look a certain way?

To be sure, there are still moments of apparent honesty here, which is ironic to say on a foundation level. After all, the role of a "mistress dispeller," someone hired by the wronged spouse to break up an affair, is one that's all about lying. Wang Zhenxi, known as "Teacher Wang," is one of those professionals, and every step of the way of trying to end a man's affair with a professional colleague involves some lie and deception, if one wants to be forthright about the tactics, or, if one is feeling more generous, a lot of playacting.

One wonders, honestly, how much of any of this we can actually believe. Everyone has a reason here to lie, evade, deflect, or remain silent on all sorts of subjects. That's even without the presence of Lo and her crew, so in including them in this process, the whole project becomes a bit suspicious in terms of its authenticity.

We should, however, grant the filmmakers, who aren't trying to take sides or even make the job of mistress dispeller look better or more effective than it actually is, some charity. The worst that could be said of the team is that they're a bit naïve about how honest complete strangers would be about private, intimate matters when they know a camera is capturing their conversations.

As for the actual subjects apart from Wang, they're trying to navigate too many complicated situations and emotions to blame them for not being as forthright as they might otherwise have been. It's not even a guarantee, after all, that the married couple and the mistress would say or do more without the presence or knowledge of the cameras, but we know almost to a certainty that the cameras have affected them on a subconscious level at least.

The couple are only known here as Mr. and Mrs. Li. She suspects that her husband is having an affair, after looking at his cellphone and seeing texts that she found rather odd. Her brother recommended Wang, who asks for some specifics as to why she believes Mr. Li is cheating on her. One of the most obvious ways we can tell that these people aren't being entirely upfront is that no one—not the wife or even the husband and mistress—actually offers any specifics about the nature of the relationship between Mr. Li and Fei Fei, a woman from a nearby city whom he met while both were doing their jobs.

Initially, Wang pretends to be a new friend of Mrs. Li, who joins the couple when they play badminton, as they have for a while and still do despite the tension between them. The entire time around the husband, the mistress dispeller acts as a concerned acquaintance, who just happens to have a degree in psychology, and after staging a reason for Mrs. Li to leave her and Mr. Li alone in the couple's apartment, Wang gradually learns about the other woman, that Mr. Li does have feelings for her, and that he does want to keep his marriage.

That starts yet another deception, in which Wang will pretend to be Mr. Li's cousin and strike up an acquaintanceship with Fei Fei—with the intention, obviously, of arranging and scheming to keep her away from the husband. One of the more complex things raised here, as both Mr. Li and Fei Fei talk without Wang present, is that nothing about their feelings for each other change, even as the mistress dispeller keeps them separated for a few months. Does this process actually help to fix whatever issues might be present in a marriage that might lead a spouse to stray, or is it just a dramatic means of putting a bandage on a wound that requires much more attention?

That Lo doesn't address this, of course, isn't a shortcoming on the part of the filmmaker. She has done her job here in as detailed and ethical a way as possible, although there's a late moment in which Wang almost takes over as director before a conversation starts. Here's another question, then: How much else of Mistress Dispeller is the result of Wang's influence and attempts to craft her own narrative, without the filmmakers even realizing it?

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