Ben O'Shea: Oh Lisa, You're Going To Love This One

Chinese documentary Mistress Dispeller, from director Elizabeth Lo, follows a woman whose job is to break up extramarital affairs. This poignant, multi-award-winning film explores devotion, desire, and the human need for connection. Find out why Ben called it one of his favourite films of the year.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Great perflick with Benoshe good mining. Ben. You know I
love a good documentary. Alice, You're gonna last as a
decent one. Oh my gosh, this is not just a
great documentary. This is one of the best films I've
seen this year. And it is wild. It is You
will watch this film and you'll go, I can't believe
this is a documentary. This is too dramatic. These are

(00:23):
surely paid actors. So it's a Chinese made documentary from
a Hong Kong filmmaker, Elizabeth Low, And it's really a
story about marriage and infidelity, but the drama is just
off the hook. So imagine in Australia, if you had
a friends or a married couple the husband is busted
cheating with a mistress. Like generally in Australia, you'd have

(00:44):
a couple of options. You probably separate, have a divorce,
or you know, maybe you come to some kind of
arrangement and you stay in the marriage. But that's basically it.
If you're in China, you've got another option. You can
hire somebody called a mistress dispeller, which is the name
of this documentary, and just the name suggests you're dispelling
the mistress, you're making her disappear, but not like in

(01:04):
the mafia swim with the fishes kind of disappear. We're
working about. We're talking about like a sort of a
relationship counselor who works with the marriage coupler, the marriage
couple and the mistress to make everybody happy and make
the mistress kind of go away and feel good about
herself and make the and save the marriage, negotiate everybody
were and this is a growing industry in China, and

(01:27):
this documentary maker we'll spent three years trying to find
people who are willing to be on camera because it's
pretty sensitive stuff. That explains how they're all on camera, yep.
And so it has found a mistress dispeller, one of
the leading ones in China deals with hundreds and hundreds
of couples every year, travels all around mainland China doing it,
gets paid, you know, like a big money to do so.

(01:48):
And so this this woman, mister and missus Lee, Mister
Lee was busted having an affair with with a young
woman named Faife who worked in a frozen food factory.
Okay way, and so she was busted. She busted him
gets in teacher Yang, sorry, Teacher Wang. The mistress Dispeller

(02:09):
who sits down with the husband, he spills his guts. Yeah, look,
I was having an affair like mere Kopper, but I
don't really want to end my marriage because you know,
I really love missus Lee, but I also like the mistress.
So I'm in a bit of a bind here. And
so the mistress dispeller goes, okay, well, let me sit
down with the mistress and finds out what's going on
with the mistress. But the way that she does it

(02:31):
is she totally pretends, like pretends to be the wife's
friend when she's sitting down with the husband having a
few drinks, then pretends to be the husband's cousin when
she sits down with the mistress. Oh, professional, they don't
know what's going on, and all of these people are
being filmed doing it, And so that Elizabeth Lowe, when
she was making this film, shot at all, but didn't

(02:52):
ever know that it would be released until these people
saw the final cut and signed off on it. So
she spent years making this movie of knowing if anyone
would ever see it. But in the end, amazingly these
people agreed to have it all captured on film and
released to the public on the condition that was never
screened in China. Yes, right, so a lot of editing

(03:14):
in it, but not a lot of script writing. No
script writing. And some scenes you will watch this and
just frequently through the film just go, I can't believe this.
I cannot believe this is a doctor entry. It's on
a lunar. It is you're not going to find it.
And it's also beautiful to watch, gorgeous cinematography, really really interesting,

(03:35):
and even though it might seem like a niche story,
you watch it and you go, do you know what?
This is actually very universal. It tells you something about
the film condition about relationships, because it's so rare that
you would have people speaking so openly about things that
are so personal and painful. Like the film opens with
missus Lee, the woman who is cheated on. She's sitting
there getting a haircut. There's a solitary tear running down

(03:57):
her cheek and this close up of her face it
makes the hair stand up on the back of your neck. Incredible.
All right, what do you even Chinese movies have playoff music?
I'm giving this one four and a half, absolutely recommended,
must see, must see film. It sounds very very different.
Oh yeah, it's wild, absolutely wild.