Filmmaker Elizabeth Lo’s MFA ’15 films offer perspective-shifting narratives that challenge viewers to think about issues from angles they have not previously considered. Her latest documentary, “Mistress Dispeller” (2024), spotlights a modern-day marriage in China with a twist: when Mrs. Li discovers her husband is having an affair, she hires Wang Zhenxi, a professional “mistress dispeller” who persuades people to end extramarital affairs. The Daily sat down with Lo on April 9 to discuss the film.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

The Stanford Daily (TSD): I’ve seen the film a few times, and I’ve left with really complicated feelings about mistress dispelling. Where do you fall in terms of how you see mistress dispelling?

Elizabeth Lo (EL): Mistress dispelling is very complicated. On one hand, if it’s a service that’s mostly used by women, the question is, why are women choosing to stay in these relationships that they’ve been betrayed in? What are the societal factors outside that make divorce difficult or stigmatized that they would opt to save their marriage using this technique over just choosing divorce? On the other hand, you could say this has emerged to help women reassert their fidelity and loyalty within their homes. There’s something very empowering about that. It’s a contradiction that it’s both a symptom of patriarchy, that women are resorting to this service, and a response to patriarchy. 

I’ve come to see the beauty of approaching a conflict without your guns blazing, but through diplomacy, even though dishonesty and lying and deception are so much a part of the mistress dispelling process. It never directly confronts anyone and calls anyone any names, and it never involves any admittance of wrongdoing. There’s something very Eastern about that as opposed to a Western approach. The downside is there’s no accountability within this model, but the upside is that there’s a lot of grace and forgiveness, and it’s a very practical way of moving forward within a family as long as you know the root causes of why the marriage itself is fracturing are addressed.

TSD: How did you balance your feelings toward the participants even as you saw them behave in objectionable ways?

EL: When I set out to make this film, I was interested in exploring what it’s like to be a woman navigating society today in modern-day China. But when I met Teacher Wang, one of the first sessions that I filmed with her was another couple in which the man just broke down crying in front of the camera as he was having one of these sessions with Wang. He was in so much pain because his wife came from a wealthier background than him. He was being bullied in his relationship, and so he found kinship with his mistress, who was from a similarly rural background. I felt my empathy toward this cheating husband leap out [during] that one afternoon. 

That was actually the impetus for why I wanted to make this film. If my compassion could stretch to a place that I did not foresee or originally feel comfortable with, what an extraordinary thing for a film to do for audiences over ninety minutes. We always knew we wanted to cast a husband who you could root for, despite his mistakes and his inability to communicate, and address the problems in his life, or in his relationships, in a brave way. With Mr. Li, he seemed like a decent human being who had been a very good husband and father. That’s why his wife was so desperate to save this marriage. It was always the intention that when we were approaching all three characters, that they would hopefully all be relatable to the audience in some way. 

TSD: How is Teacher Wang able to manage her interpersonal relationships with such immersive work?

EL: That’s a great question. I think her personal life has suffered as a result of her immersion in her work. Her dedication to her clients is 24/7. Her life and health had suffered at the time that we were filming.

TSD: How did participants experience the final version of the film?

EL: Before we finished the film, my producers, Maggie Lee, Emma Miller and I, [developed] an ethics process because there’s so much deception that we’re documenting. We traveled back to China before finishing the film, and showed each of them a cut of the film separately, so they could review their portrayals, fully grasp what role Wang had played in their lives and do a safety review and give us their blessing. Thankfully, each of them, which is so much a credit to their character — they each gave their blessing for the film. The only condition was that, and this was since the beginning of agreeing to participate, we would never release the film publicly in China.

Since its release, we’ve just kind of updated them about the progress of the film — that it got into the Venice [Film Festival]. And then, it was shortlisted for the Oscars. It’s funny, their reaction when it was shortlisted for the Oscars was very humbling, like, “I don’t understand why this is doing so well” — Asian parent response [laughs].

This film is different from my first film, “Stray” (2020) which follows a stray dog from her perspective as she’s wandering through the city of Istanbul and overhearing different conversations happen. What ties these two films together has been this idea that when you look at the world away from the centers of power, there’s a more accurate vision of life that you see. With “Stray,” I was hoping to accomplish this through the perspective of a stray dog. With this film, I went into it wanting to examine the structures of love and family from the peripheral gaze of the mistress, who’s outside of the bounds of a sanctioned relationship, and see what that would reveal. I hope that people who like “Mistresses Dispeller” can turn to “Stray” and see it’s an entirely different film, but maybe there’ll be something in common that they appreciate.