Interview with Elizabeth Lo / Mistress Dispeller

This week, I got the chance to speak with the wonderful Hong Kong filmmaker Elizabeth Lo, whose current film, Mistress Dispeller, is playing at this year’s Sydney Film Festival. Her film follows a “Mistress Dispeller”, a job which has come to some popularity in mainland China, in which this “Mistress Dispeller” is hired to discreetly break up your spouse’s affair. Together, Ms Lo and I were able to discuss the long process of making a documentary, why and how she constructed the film in its strong style, and why she wanted to make this film in the first place.

Billy Newbery  
I wanted to start with what got you into the topic, or what got you interested in making this film?

Elizabeth Lo
Well, I wanted to use the documentary film as a way to get to know mainland China, because I grew up in Hong Kong. I knew that I wanted to set my second film in China, my first being set in Turkey, as a way to get to know it. Growing up, I’ve always loved all sorts of romantic movies, but I noticed as I was getting older, the kind of love that was represented in Hollywood films felt so different from the way that love was expressed in my own culture. I wanted to really use something like the crisis of an infidelity to explore and examine love as it’s expressed and experienced in my own culture.

At first, I was exploring the world of private detectives, divorce lawyers, and custody battles. Anything in the realm of love taking place in China.  So when I discovered the mistress dispelling phenomenon, I worked with my China-based producer, Maggie Lee, to meet with dozens of real Mistress dispellers in China. Teacher Wang, who is the central character in the film, was the only one who, on day one of our scouting trip, allowed us to film on camera the tail end of a case of an entangled love story. I remember, in that one afternoon, I could feel myself sympathising with the cheating husband and even the mistress. In one afternoon, I could enable my empathy to expand into the corners of a love triangle in a way I didn’t expect. I thought it would be really meaningful to try to make a film that, over 90 minutes, audiences would feel the same way. That their empathy would expand and stretch to a place that they didn’t think was possible. I think if a film can help you do that over 90 minutes, that’s a worthwhile venture.

How was teacher Wang able to give you so much access to her business? 

She has appeared in a lot of Chinese media herself and has been able to get access to her clients in Chinese media for short journalistic pieces. We didn’t realise it would take three years to get the kind of access that we wanted for an independent theatrical documentary, she didn’t expect it either. On some level, part of it was our persistence, we really wanted to make this happen. We filmed with her for three years. Going until we found the case that we could document authentically from beginning to end. On her part, she probably wants to leave behind a legacy of her work because she is proud of what she does in helping resolve marital crises without confrontation. There were times when she was kicking us out of her office because we were really getting in the way of her business. During those times, we were able to film love industries across China. As well as go to Chinese national parks and film incredible wilderness landscapes that are interstitials throughout the film.

Does that mean across those three years, you filmed bits and pieces from other couples’ stories? 

Yes, we filmed with seven or so other couples. Sometimes they were at the tail ends of cases, or we just got the beginning. Or they were not the kind of people that we felt audiences could sympathise with. So it took us three years to finally get to the couple that you see in the film. Partly the reason we got them is because the little brother in the film was a male mistress himself who was getting dispelled by Teacher Wang two years prior. He had a good experience with us back then and realised how amazing Teacher Wang is at her work. When his older sister came to him and said, “I have a problem, my husband is cheating on me”. He said, “I have the perfect solution for you”. Participate in this film, and Wang will make your problem go away, because she’s this magician. That’s how we got this sort of pre-existing trust with Mrs. Lee, the central character in the film, from the very beginning, without having met her.

But how did you get the husband and his mistress on board without knowing at first what film they were a part of? 

We wanted to document an authentic case, and because deception is inherent to Teacher Wang’s work, the husband and the mistress couldn’t have known exactly what our film was about. Instead, they initially agreed to participate in a film much more broadly about modern love and dating and marriage in China. Through my producer, Emma Miller and I, we knew that we had to stay ethical somehow, while still trying to authentically capture this case. We built a backup plan so that by the end of filming, they had the opportunity to re-consent to being in the film or drop out. Once they knew the true role of Teacher Wang in their lives. At that point, we had so much material that we had collected over three years of different love industries, different cases, that there was a way for us to make a film that wasn’t as character-driven and more sprawling. That was our backup plan. Though thankfully, after showing the film to all three participants, they all still generously agreed to remain featured.

Wow, then that means everything you’d shot was all very much of a piece and stylistically the same across those three years. 

Yeah, going into the project, I had an aesthetic vision for how I saw the film playing out that didn’t really change. In terms of the cinematography, I drew from Jeanne Dielman by Chantal Ackerman. Where it’s a lot of long takes, fixed frames and domestic settings, elevating women’s stories and emotions. That’s the approach that I took throughout the three years of filming, and partly because I also saw how Teacher Wang’s work all takes place over tabletops, hours long discussions. Sessions with her all transpire over tea and different meals. The frame really lent itself to, where you could allow audiences the thrill of watching a real, organic conversation unfold in front of your eyes. Seeing every string that Wang pulls, every lie she tells. What reaction it elicits in the other person, how it changes their mind, and seeing her work her way into people’s psyches.

I found that the style so powerful, instead of going a more conventional route, you allowed us to sit there with the people in a reflective manner. It’s a style which made every edit really powerful, as you only made a couple of cuts per scene. Each cut gives you the essence of a scene, without it being rushed over or overlong. How did you manage to figure out where those cuts needed to be?

I was very fortunate to be able to work with veteran, Oscar-nominated Charlotte Munch Bengtsen. Who has edited films like Truffle Hunters, All That Breaths, and The Act of Killing. She has this impeccable sense to create space so audiences have time to believe in the authenticity of the scenes as they’re unfolding. Knowing when there’s new information that is valuable, or when time is needed for audiences to process what has been said, or when to cut to the next scene. She has such a strong storytelling sensibility. The style that I really wanted the film to have fits in this space of meditation and of thoughtfulness. Not just a shallow procedural of a strange love industry phenomenon in China. It easily could have been, spectacle could have easily taken over the film. What we really wanted to do was to make the film a character study of each of those three people as they’re undergoing this process, and what it means for each of them as the plot unfolds. Becoming a meditation on love, ties, duty, sacrifice, as it unfolds, rather than just, “oh look at the strange industry in China”.

At what point in the process do you and Charlotte Munch Bengtsen start editing together? Were you editing as you went, changing the structure as events unfolded?

We started the editing process at the tail end of the final case, during the last of the four months it took to film it. Building an assembly, then structuring it together over the course of five or six months with Charlotte. When you talked about how every cut felt meaningful. One of the pet peeves I have, and I didn’t want this film to descend into, is that sort of reality show territory. Reality shows are constructed from reaction shots, fabricated plots and fabricated emotional dynamics through manipulations in post. This premise itself as a documentary is already so unbelievable to audiences with the kind of access that we got. I felt like we couldn’t afford to have that many cuts; I wanted audiences to see things happening as it was in the moment.

Some of my favourite moments are when people’s faces sometimes fall out of shot and you can barely see them, but you know what they’re feeling. Were there multiple cameras in the room to capture all those moments? 

There were always two cameras in the room, which was useful. I remember thinking, wow, this is the most heavily covered kitchen scene ever. We also only had one sound person, and often he would just lav the participants ahead of time. For most scenes, especially those long dialogue scenes, the crew and myself were never in the room. We would monitor it from afar because we wanted them to feel as unselfconscious as possible. The film being designed with a sense of stillness, we were able to actually practically pull that off. Coming in every hour or so to change batteries and cards. That hopefully, really allowed the participants to forget our presence as much as possible. Though, of course they’re very aware of it and it for sure affected them. Teacher Wang told us it definitely affected the behavior of the clients. It made everything much more muted. Everything was simmering under the surface, they were trying to be their best selves in front of the camera. What you’re seeing as an audience member, and what is fascinating as a documentarian. Is that constant negotiation between their baser selves and their best selves?

With that kind of shooting method surely you would have a lot of footage. Is there much that’s on the cutting room floor?

There’s a lot of stuff that’s on the cutting room floor, we shot like 500 hours of footage over three years. With the final case alone, it’s probably like 60 hours, which is all condensed to one and a half hours. There were times when I wished this could be like a three hour slow burn film. You could really watch them converse. Everyone of those discrete conversations that last about eight minutes to ten minutes in the film. Which is already a long time to focus on one conversation in a documentary. Really, each of those was at least an hour or two hours long. It’s fascinating to see the twists and turns that the conversations go through. How many layers you can read into what they’re saying. Though in the end, Charlotte, my editor, and I, we decided to be more economical.

You have a kind of elliptical feeling where there’s certain things that you leave out. Focusing more on the feelings then facts especially with those interstitials connecting scenes. You said that you started to film that connective stuff before you started with this couple.

Yeah, I had always imagined that wilderness and natural landscapes would play a part in evoking the moods of the characters and of the story. In the way that the weather reflects the turmoil of the characters in a romance novel. I knew that there’s these conversations that are so intense and dialogue heavy and claustrophobic that I wanted viewers to have space to reflect on their own love life or what the characters are going through. Also, to say that all these stories that you’re seeing are born in this country, in this land. That’s why those landscape shots are woven in there, in addition to those love industry tangents. The dating camps, the parental marriage markets, and the telephone matchmaking marketers showing what love is like now. How love is sort of tied to market ideology, where a woman’s value goes down as her age goes up. I have no mortgage, therefore I’m more. When that happens anywhere across the world, not just in China, it prevents connection between people who are desperately seeking it.

Another aspect that I thought was enchanting was the use of music. It’s used in some very large, very powerful moments, and just as often is very restrained, letting a moment just sit. How did you decide where the music should be and how big it should be? 

That was again, working closely with Charlotte Munch Bengtson, our editor. We were really trying to find the tone of the film and how seriously we take this love story that we’re about to tell. The reason why we begin and end the film with opera, with Puccini, which is such a familiar song that you associate with Merchant Ivory films. We wanted to transpose that British countryside romance onto this middle-class story taking place in the heartland of China, among middle-aged people. We wanted to give their story as much weight and gravitas as all the other romantic heroines get in Jane Austen adaptations.

Then also, we worked with Brian Macomber, this great composer, to create a modern score around Fei Fei’s, the mistress’s, storyline. Where you’re feeling the urban loneliness and modernity in the score itself. He was also taking classical Baroque pieces and tampering with them a little bit. Then I used the French song by Otis at the end over the husband, which everybody says is like their favourite song of the film. That track really brought out a lot of teen angst for me. The feelings of yearning that you feel in middle school or high school. Transposing that over the husband’s storyline as he’s at this fork in the road, having to choose between the oath that he pledged to his family versus his own desires, for a different kind of happiness in his life. That song was placed there to say even as you reach your middle age or old age, those feelings of yearning, love and confusion probably don’t die away.

Interview by Billy Newbery