Mistress Dispeller

 

Director Elizabeth Lo

The director on the set

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

MISTRESS DISPELLER            C+                                                                                           China  USA  (94 mi)  2024  d: Elizabeth Lo

Everyone agreed to participate both at the beginning and end of production, as their understanding of the film and mistress dispeller’s role evolved over time.                                    —opening title card 

Teacher Wang taught me a lot.  About love, and other things.  She said, “Look, you are going through this, this difficulty, and we should film it, so more women, more people, can face their families and learn how to handle a situation like this…”  I want more people to know that love doesn’t come easy, especially for people at our age.  Don’t give up so easily.                              —Mrs. Li

While the premise of this documentary is interesting, where the latest Chinese phenomena is hiring someone to officially drive philandering husbands away from their mistresses and back to the fold of the family, yet this one-note subject matter quickly grows tiring, as little is actually learned in this rather light-hearted exposé.  Easily what works best are the operatic inclusions of Puccini musical excerpts, Gianni Schicchi: O, mio babbino caro YouTube (2:22) and Madame Butterfly: Humming Chorus YouTube (3:05), which are emotionally powerful, but most of the film falls flat, despite some rather absurd stabs at humor, as nothing is ever explored in-depth, remaining superficially on the surface for the entire film, so not much is actually learned, though the absence of emotional outbursts or angry confrontations does make the detached, cinéma vérité style more plausible.  One character (Mrs. Li) even acknowledges at one point that she might have acted differently if the camera had not been there.  While the psychological intent makes more sense in theory, attempting to steer the various parties in certain directions, the reality is never satisfying, as we see no evidence of what is proposed.  This is a very ambiguous film, leaving viewers a bit perplexed, shining little light on this unusual profession.  While the culture on display is Chinese, filmed with actual participants in China, the approach feels more American, arising out of the Sundance Institute Producer’s Program, so it’s a bit of a mixed bag.  While a few scenes feel scripted, like bringing in the film crew on camera during a particularly pertinent moment, the fact that this is a straightforward documentary with so little dramatic impact just makes it harder to take seriously, where a differently edited or fictionalized version of tonal shifts might have been more compelling, throwing in scenarios that were simply missing from what we see onscreen, where the quiet lyricism of filmmaker Hong Sang-soo comes to mind.  For instance, we learn next to nothing about the marital relationship or their family, which seems to exist in a vacuum, so viewers gain little insight as to why this relationship needs to be saved, though separation is not an option due to the wealth the husband brings.  The marriage is not close, exhibiting little intimacy, where instead of any romantic connection, love is bound up with sacrifice, duty, and what’s left unspoken, so there’s no reason to suspect that will change in the future, despite the intervention, so in the end they seem no better off. 

Born and raised in Hong Kong, the director graduated from the NYU Tisch School of the Arts, with a Masters in Fine Arts from Stanford University, having been exposed as a youth to pop culture and movie ideals of romance, which drastically differs from the world of China portrayed in this film.  Up until now she has primarily been a director of shorts, making one earlier feature, STRAY (2020), an uncompromising social realist film that offers a dog’s-eye view of Istanbul, inviting viewers into their immersive world, continually providing the spatial point of view of stray dogs on the street.  This, on the other hand, is all about a philosophical concept, a social theory, which the filmmaker attempts to bring to life, with varying degrees of success.  Filmed over the course of two years, where Lo is not just the director, but also the cinematographer and co-editor on the film, the actual subjects feel authentic enough, where the problem is we just never learn very much about them, feeling more like strangers both in the beginning and at the end of the picture.  As we drop into their lives, there’s no real examination of cheating husbands, or this unconventional profession, so we’re left with what we see onscreen, which shows people going through the mundane aspects of their lives, more often bored with their routines, as what they’ve grown accustomed to is the emptiness of their existence, where the promise of middle class comforts has not brought any of them happiness.  Shifting our sympathies between the husband, wife, and mistress, often using a static camera position, the film uses a crisis of infidelity to explore the ways emotion, pragmatism, and cultural norms collide to shape romantic relationships in contemporary China, often involving secrecy and shame, though a more interesting and largely untold aspect is exploring how women navigate Chinese society.  At the center of the story is Teacher Wang (Wang Zhenxi), whose undercover presence attempts to influence the various participants, the middle aged marital couple, Mr. and Mrs. Li, along with the younger mistress Fei Fei, who is attractive, though more economically challenged, yet she confidently expects Mr. Li will choose her in the end, and may have even thought she was the central figure of the shooting, openly expressing a deep longing for love and commitment.  When Mrs. Li suspects her husband’s inexplicable absences are not just due to extended business meetings, she hires the dispeller to save her marriage, as in her grown-up child’s eyes they have the “perfect” family. 

Presumably documenting all sides of the love triangle, neither Mr. Li nor his mistress exhibit any signs of guilt or regret, finding nothing morally wrong with their behavior, while Mrs. Li is simply angry and indignant, yet neither she nor her husband have the capacity to speak about this issue with each other, so it simply festers over time, revealing episodic glimpses of a disintegrating marriage, including tense bickering at the dinner table, or paranoia surrounding cellphone usage, where they are not at all averse to intercepting texts and messages.  While this may be a sociographic reflection of a society undergoing cultural shifts from rigid social norms, it’s hard to get past the element of romantic resignation, the examination of a love story without any signs of love, though Mrs. Li claims that they were once the envy of their friends (who we never see).  Viewers may be a bit skeptical about this so-called profession, where many may be inclined to believe it exists along the same wavelength as psychic readings, where there is little scientific evidence to offer credibility.  Apparently this extramarital industry has only blossomed in the last ten years in China, largely due to rising rates of adultery, along with a growing economy, creating rapidly expanding middle and upper classes and a rising divorce rate, leaving people with options that never existed before, where technology and shifting values play a huge role in reshaping modern ideas on love and marriage.  By holding shots on faces for unconventionally long durations, one can gauge the levels of loneliness and regret that lie under the surface, as people struggle with their shortcomings, yet it’s hard to believe Mr. Li would confess his infidelity to a complete stranger, “With my wife it’s real life, with Fei Fei it’s like being in the sun,” or allow this dispeller, disguised as a distant friend of the family, into his inner sanctum, where that absurdity reaches comic heights by the end.  But it all feels more like people gossiping endlessly about their frustrations in life, as the marital problems are never approached directly, feeling more like a manipulative con job, where professional credentials are produced to take money from wealthy families, presuming they’ll be happy about the outcome.  By the end, however, there is simply no evidence that anyone is happy except the dispeller, who does not come cheap, paid in the tens of thousands for her services, who is the only one who has profited from the experience.  Inexplicably, despite the shortcomings, this film won the Best Documentary at the Chicago Film Festival 2024, Festival Award Winners - Cinema Chicago. 

That Day, On the Beach (Hai tan de yi tian)

Director Edward Yang on the set

Wu Nien-jen, Hou Hsiao-hsien, Edward Yang, Chen Kuo-fu, and Chan Hung-chih

THAT DAY, ON THE BEACH (Hai tan de yi tian)             B+                                                       Taiwan  (166 mi)  1983  d: Edward Yang

Edward Yang, along with his compatriot Hou Hsiao-hsien, are the two central figures of the New Taiwanese Cinema movement of the 1980’s, where Yang’s visual and narrative style is among the more distinctive aspects, easily the most literary and novelistic of this young group, as his films are quiet, slow, and pensive, using a minimum of dialogue, often using images alone to condense and/or omit dialogue, with many invoking comparisons to Antonioni, with this film in particular resembling similar existential themes as L’AVVENTURA (1960).  The 60’s was a decade in search of the alienated modern soul, personified by the soul-searching emptiness of Antonioni’s L’AVVENTURA (1960), a film that initially shocked audiences, where the initial efforts to find a person who has mysteriously disappeared are soon forgotten, showing how easily we lose our way, wondering how we became so indifferent to the rapidly changing world around us, dissecting middle class discontentment by delving into the heart of existential angst.  This film highlights a similar disappearance of a central figure “that day on the beach,” accentuating the expanse of the landscape, where the lives of other characters seem to revolve around that disappearance, caught up in their own delusions and self-deceptions, revealing a shift in how we understand the world around us.  The Antonioni comparison continued with his next films, as Taipei Story (Qing mei zhu ma) (1985) has been compared to L’ECLISSE (1962), and The Terrorizers (Kong bu fen zi) (1986) to BLOW-UP (1966).  While Yang seemed to resent that Italian comparison, the role of European art cinema played a role in his development, though his films are passionately connected to a specific place, as he consistently addresses problems associated by the modernization of Taiwanese life.  Born in Shanghai, his father came from a southern province Guangdong, his mother from Hebei in the north, part of the impoverished intelligentsia, with both working as office clerks in the nationalist government, moving to Taipei at the age of two, a time when millions of mainlanders fled to the island of Taiwan fleeing the Communist revolution of 1949, later moving to the United States to study computer engineering, working as a software programmer in Seattle for eight years, telling the famous story about how he happened to walk past a Seattle cinema in 1980 that was playing Herzog’s AGUIRRE, THE WRATH OF GOD (1972), where he walked in and came out a different person, igniting an excitement, quickly returning to Taiwan to make films.  He was among the four different young directors chosen to make the generational coming-of-age portmanteau film IN OUR TIME (1982), departing from the kung-fu action and romantic melodrama films of the earlier decades, creating a more realistic aesthetic, drawn from daily life, compared stylistically to the Italian neorealism movement, considered revolutionary at the time due to its innovations, where Yang’s contribution is a 30-minute segment entitled Expectations starring cinema legend Sylvia Chang from King Hu’s Legend of the Mountain (Shan zhong zhuan qi) (1979), an acutely delicate, poetic sketch of a young teenage girl as she reaches puberty, arguably the first film attempting to treat Taiwan’s recent past, which is considered the first example of Taiwan’s New Cinema Movement.  Perhaps due to the director’s commitment to formal experimentation, finding a niche within a global film community of festivals and art cinema, many of his films have done poorly domestically, while they have been lauded internationally.

The first of his so-called urban trilogy that also includes Taipei Story (Qing mei zhu ma) (1985) and The Terrorizers (Kong bu fen zi) (1986), featuring confused characters teetering on the brink of middle-age, using narrative structures that become sequentially more experimental, this is generally acknowledged as the first full-length feature of the Taiwan New Wave, a modernist exploration of the alienation of the individual in the barren urban landscape of contemporary society, emphasizing psychological complexity, sending a message that material prosperity is no guarantee for happiness.  Co-written by Yang with Wu Nien-jen, who plays the father NJ in Yang’s final film Yi Yi: A One and a Two... (2000), it’s also the debut feature of cinematographer Christopher Doyle, known for the luxuriant moodiness established in his long association with Hong Kong director Wong Kar-wai, with Yang using a subdued and much more experimental approach, as the entire film is told in flashback, and at times, flashbacks within flashbacks, using the Mildred Pierce (1945) model, implementing methods that had never been seen before in Taiwan cinema.  Using a rigorously modernist aesthetic with a highly unique style, look, and feel to present a vision of contemporary Taiwan, Yang places a huge emphasis on women’s role in a capitalistic society and the consequences they suffer from historical and social changes, representing a split between ancient values, patriarchal traditions, and the need for liberation from old stereotypes and impositions.  Pervasive themes include alienation in human relationships, indifference, crime, and the effects of materialism, focusing almost exclusively on the urban middle class struggle to find new value in the fast-changing environment of the urbanized city, searching for an uncertain yet everchanging national identity, which is explored in even greater detail in Taipei Story (Qing mei zhu ma).  Spanning a period from the 50’s to the 80’s, this film coincides historically with a period when Taiwan transformed itself from an agriculture to an industrial society, where most of the resources are concentrated in urban areas.  Dismantling the agricultural social structure is accompanied by the erosion of traditional values of authority, such as arranged marriage, which is a central premise of the film, while also investigating the complexity of women’s experiences and interiority.  The protagonist of the story is Jia-li (Sylvia Chang), a modern woman who meets an old childhood friend Ching-ching (Terry Hu) at the beginning of the film, a famous classical pianist who is returning to Taiwan for the first time in thirteen years, where the two talk and reminisce in a modern city restaurant, with the film jumping back and forth between past and present, deftly exploring the changes in social relations in context with Taiwan’s transition into a globally oriented society.  Jia-li’s family perfectly represents the traditional patriarchal family, where the father’s authority as the head of the household is unquestioned, with the mother playing a supportive role, even having to put up with his marital infidelity for the sake of the family, a recurring theme running through all of Yang’s films, a time when conformity was the rule, inheriting a social structure from the Japanese occupation of Taiwan from 1895 to 1945, when Taiwan was returned to China.  The family lives in a Japanese style house, wear Japanese style clothes, and use futons for sleeping, all holdovers from the old world, rural society.  The gist of the film is breaking away from those traditions, with characters often caught in between the past and the present, finding themselves living in undefined times, where adapting to the everchanging present is a key to their success. 

Ching-ching was the childhood sweetheart of Jia-li’s older brother Jia-sen (Tso Ming-hsiang), seen early on watching him at a rugby game, but the relationship abruptly ended when their father arranged for his marriage to someone else, a loveless marriage and a shocking development in his life, but it fit the traditional demands of family life, as their father (Nan Chun) is a stern physician who runs his own family clinic out of the home and demands absolute obedience from his wife and children, content to sacrifice the happiness of their children to reinforce outdated, old world ideals, expecting the son to follow in his footsteps, so he is sent to medical school in order to inherit his father’s practice, something her brother initially thinks he wants to do but later comes to regret.  In order to emphasize this cultural juxtaposition, the film opens with the music of Beethoven’s 3rd Piano Concerto, as Yang loved to intersperse classical musical motifs throughout his career, accentuating the interplay between traditional values and Westernization.  In a later childhood memory, we see Jia-li and her brother as infants sitting at a table where they’re forced to sit with their father as he listens intently to Beethoven’s 6th Pastoral Symphony, evoking an extraordinary poignancy, as we see he’s attempting to instill in them the idea of expanding their cultural horizons, but he’s not allowing them to explore for themselves, instead he’s forcing it upon them against their will, symbolic of his iron will, a force that his children are helpless to fight against.  Skillfully moving effortlessly between characters and time frames, a hallmark of Yang films, we soon discover the highly enigmatic and complex narrative is about Jia-li’s tragic marriage and the suicide or disappearance of her husband “that day on the beach,” quickly filling in her own backstory with an infusion of Elvis Presley at a school dance, a theme explored further with A Brighter Summer Day (Gu ling jie shao nian sha ren shi jian) (1991), as she meets De-wei (David Mao), a gentle spirit who captures her heart, feeling instantly compatible.  However this elation is soon met with her father’s own wishes to marry her off to another gynecologist, obviously very pleased with himself, feeling elated, and relieved, “That’s a weight off my mind,” That Day, on the Beach [海灘的一天] (Edward Yang, 1983) - Excerpt YouTube (2:56).  Defying her father’s decision, however, Jia-li escapes in the night and elopes, running off to Taipei as she marries De-wei in a public wedding ceremony, resulting in exile from her family, an action that announces the coming of a new era of free love, where the wife is free to make her own decisions.  But the bulk of the film sees their marriage deteriorating, as it’s not what she thought it would be, trapped in a no man’s land, as her husband is never at home, married to his job and the afterhours drinking extravaganzas associated with the Asian business model, exclusive only to his all-male business associates, one of whom is fellow New Wave director Hou Hsiao-hsien, evocative of boyhood scenes from Hou’s own film made that same year, THE BOYS FROM FENGKUEI (1983).  Working for his childhood best friend, Ah-Tsai (Ming Hsu), who has always been something of a womanizing playboy, where everything’s been handed to him on a silver platter, De-wei, on the other hand, feels alienated within his own group, pressured to constantly produce money for the company, yet feeling that same pressure from his marriage, unable to connect with either one, continually leaving him feeling exhausted and emotionally depleted, turning to a psychiatrist for help, though without his wife’s (or the viewer’s) knowledge.  A scathing indictment of capitalism, not only does it oppress the wage earners, but it disproportionately affects women even more, stuck in suffocating relationships, fed the same delusions that consumerism is the answer to all their problems, but they’re forced to endure the crushing disappointments of the men, stuck in meaningless jobs, often taking out their frustrations on their wives in a vicious power struggle to salvage what’s left of their shattered dreams, with Jia-li exhausted and at her wit’s end heard uttering “Our society tears men and women apart.”

A sign that something is amiss is Jia-sen’s struggle in dissection class, an indication that perhaps he’s chosen the wrong field, yet he perseveres for his family’s sake, where his life is carefully choreographed ahead of time, destined for misery, much as Edward Yang’s own life was by his own parents, heading off to engineering school to please them, before breaking from the preordained path and constructing something completely new, tapping into his creative instincts.  Ching-ching has had to do much the same, deemed unsuitable by Jia-sen’s parents, burying her repressed desires into classical music and studying abroad, building an entirely new career for herself, but it came with a price, as her incessant touring, required for building a name for herself, kept her away from home.  With this film Yang seems to be suggesting that events have a ripple effect in people’s lives, where the title of the film implies one thing, yet the actual storyline follows the multiple threads that reverberate and echo off that traumatic event, creating their own unique storylines that never could have been anticipated.  While Ching-ching is a world renowned artist introduced in the beginning of the film, the story shifts to the more pedestrian life of Jia-li, whose hopes and dreams are shattered by the emptiness of her “perfect” marriage, suffering from loneliness and boredom, deftly exploring that void, symbolized by the traumatic moment she receives the news that her husband has drowned.  But it’s not what it seems, as she doesn’t recognize any of the clues uncovered by the police, and hasn’t seen him in days, so she has no understanding of his state of mind with suggestions of suicide, suddenly realizing she doesn’t really know this man at all.  Yang shifts into a documentary mode as various fishermen are interviewed, recalling a strange man alone on the beach, never moving from that spot, seemingly all day and into the evening, later seen wading into the water, which was too cold for swimming, eventually realizing he was gone, but some of his personal effects were discovered on the beach.  Yang’s film is a Proustian exploration of memory, examining the changing tides of history, but also the circuitous paths one takes, like branches of a tree, each reflective of a different aspect of one’s life, with suggestions that the whole, or the entirety of one’s life, remains a mystery that can never truly be understood, instead we are left with fragments of memory that can only hint at the deeper meaning.  The ocean symbolizes that vast unknown, an inescapable fixture on the landscape, where the blue horizon is endless, yet seemingly it will offer a clue as to what happened to her troubled husband.  While she sits around waiting for police to uncover pertinent evidence, she is visited by Ah-Tsai, who reports De-wei has secretly been embezzling company funds, thinking he may have actually gotten away with it, and might be in some faraway country by now.  It should come as no surprise that Ah-Tsai is only interested in his money, showing no concern whatsoever for the well-being of De-wei, or his disappearance, viewed exclusively as an underling who will have to be replaced.  However, this information clears a path for Jia-li, discovering he had been cheating on her, and his business partners as well, ultimately realizing it doesn’t really matter if that’s her husband’s body they’re searching for out in the ocean, as he’s already gone from her life forever, as this is an irreparable breach, finally coming to the realization her marriage unraveled some time ago.  All taking place in a conversation at a restaurant, what it uncovers through multiple flashbacks is nothing less than epic, a journey of self-discovery and personal transformation, employing the most novelistic of narrative devices.  The film lacks the fluidity of his other films, and often feels distant, resorting to long shots and extreme long shots, which only increases the sense of detachment, accentuated by the ambiguity of a subversive finale, yet it unquestionably carries an impact.  While it may not be the masterpiece that Yang’s next several films would be, as a debut film it’s a remarkable achievement, even when viewed today, as there are few other films like it, yet it doesn’t get the recognition of some of Yang’s other films, shrouded in mystery even to this day, yet despite the melancholic overtones, it exudes a hopeful optimism, suggesting the past prepares us for the future.      

That Day On The Beach (subs) : Edward yang - Internet Archive  entire film, with English subtitles, YouTube (2:46:22)

FILMADRID & MUBI: The Video Essay—"Taiwan As A Window ...  While none of the excerpts chosen are from this film, they are instructive nonetheless, video essay by Rafael Guilhem, June 15, 2017, YouTube (5:49)