This is Thom Powers writing while Anisha is on summer break. I’m pleased to share the very first interview that director Elizabeth Lo has given for her highly anticipated documentary, Mistress Dispeller.
In a few weeks, I’ll host the film at the Toronto International Film Festival where I oversee the programmers who select the TIFF Docs section. Mistress Dispeller is also playing at Venice, plus other upcoming festivals still to be announced.
The film, set in China, focuses on a woman known as Teacher Wang, whose job is to intervene when a marriage is in crisis. In the documentary, we see her called into action by a wife whose husband is seeing a younger woman.
Elizabeth follows the case over several months. We watch Teacher Wang lend a sympathetic ear to each person – the wife, the husband, and the mistress – to better understand what each one needs to move forward.
They express themselves with such vulnerability, it’s a wonder there’s a camera in the room.
Elizabeth’s last documentary was Stray, following the life of street dogs in Istanbul. Michael Moore called it “a simple work of genius.” In Stray, her challenge was to film animals. Mistress Dispeller poses a very different challenge to film inside a marriage. Elizabeth told me:
Growing up, I have always loved romantic films and romantic comedies. They're never given the same sort of gravitas as a war film or a hypermasculine subject. I was inspired by the language that Chantal Akerman talks about her film Jeanne Dielman – elevating domestic dramas and the things that concern women, which are emotional relationships. I wanted to focus on those. Even in the approach of my cinematography, there is a patient, fixed-frame aesthetic. We always imagined that through these interactions between people going through such an intimate crisis, you'd be able to authentically see how they were talking to each other.
I invited Elizabeth to discuss how she pulled this off. We promise: no spoilers in this preview!
