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- [00:03]
A
The presenting sponsor of TOPDOCS is Netflix. Now presenting all the Empty Rooms. Directed by Academy Award nominee Joshua Seftel, it is a Cinema Eye Honors and IDA Awards nominee. Reporter Steve Hartman and photographer Lou Bopp embark on a cross country journey to memorialize the bedrooms of children lost to school shootings, highlighting the urgent need for action against the rising epidemic of gun violence. All the empty rooms for your awards consideration.
- [00:48]
B
Hi, I'm Ken Jacobsen and welcome to TopDocs. Today we're talking to Elizabeth Lowe, the director of Mistress Dispeller. The film had its world Premiere at the 2024 Venice International Film Festival, screened at the Toronto International Film Festival and many others. The film has won numerous awards including at Venice, Chicago, New Orleans and Denver. Mistress Dispeller has recently been named to the Oscar shortlist in the documentary feature film category. Elizabeth Lowe has been featured in Filmmaker Magazine's 25 New Faces Independent Film and Doc NYC's 40 Under 40. She was selected for the prestigious Concordia Studio Fellowship and Gotham HBO Documentary Development Initiative. Her debut feature Stray premiered at Tribeca in 2020 and won best International Feature at Hot Docs. Elizabeth has also directed award winning short documentaries including Hotel 22, Bison Head and Mother's Day. Elizabeth. Elizabeth Lowe, welcome to Top Docs.
- [01:51]
C
Thank you so much for having me.
- [01:52]
B
Thank you for being here and congratulations on the film. I know right now you're in the middle of some Cinema Eye Honors events, so congratulations about that as well.
- [02:03]
C
Thank you.
- [02:04]
B
I'm dying to talk to you about this film. As I mentioned, it premiered at Venice in 2024, so it's been around a while, but it's great to finally have the opportunity to sit down and talk about it. So actually I'm curious, putting you on the spot a bit, when was the last time you watched the film?
- [02:24]
C
Actually, just a month ago. Yeah, just a month ago we had a private screening in Hong Kong for family and friends, and so I wanted to sit through it with them.
- [02:34]
B
Oh, wow. I'm curious because of that gap between when it was finished and that screening a month ago. Like, did you see anything new in the film or think about anything in a different way?
- [02:45]
C
Yeah, definitely. I mean, I feel like the film is designed for repeat viewing so you can catch different expressions, micro expressions on people's faces. And this time I felt even more sympathy for the husband this time around, just seeing how he's navigating his life and how he's feeling in that moment as it's represented in the film. Yeah, I've always, since the beginning I've felt this sympathy for him and this fork in the road that he's at, which is unexpected even for me, too. But I love that the film takes me there or that these characters took me there.
- [03:19]
B
Yeah. That's interesting, because when I watched it the first time in fall 2024, I was not expecting to feel sympathy or empathy for him. And I did. And I thought. And that was really surprising and just kind of opened up this kind of emotional depth, I think, to the character, you know, all the people in the film, and to the film itself. This time when I was watching the film again, you know, get ready to talk to you, I felt even more empathy toward Fei. Fei.
- [03:50]
C
Yeah.
- [03:51]
B
It's interesting how you just feel differently and see different things over time.
- [03:56]
C
Yeah. No, that was always the intention that it would help people explore their own compassion and the capacity for their own compassion, despite the circumstances that this film finds itself in.
- [04:08]
B
You just mentioned that you had a Friends and family screening in Hong Kong, which is where you were born and grew up, but you went to undergrad in the States. You've made Films in the U.S. a feature documentary in Turkey now, Mistress Dispeller, is set in China. I was just curious, you know, making this film in China, did you find you needed to make certain adjustments in your style or just in how you approached people about the film you were making? I guess. In other words, what kind of filmmaker is Elizabeth Low in China that's maybe a little bit different than the filmmaker you are in the US or somewhere else?
- [04:48]
C
Well, I will say, because the subject matter is so radically different from my first film, which was Stray, which is a film that's entirely told from the perspective of a stray dog as she wanders through the streets of Istanbul. And being a complete outsider to that country and culture and having my mind, mind and worldview completely cracked open by these dogs and the ways in which that civilization related to stray dogs and how remarkable it was and not understanding the language and moving through that space completely at the mercy of people's body language. And of course, the Turkish co producers that I worked with there and their ability to sort of translate things. For me in China, it was different because I'm both insider and outsider to this culture. There was something really freeing about being in Turkey and not understanding the language, whereas in China, having that understanding was a different relationship to our participants. And I'm very thankful to my Chinese producer, Maggie Lee. She helped navigate a lot of the relationships that we had with the Mistress Dispeller and her clients and everybody we met in the field, all the different love industries that we did. But I. I loved the sense of intimacy that comes from being a part of a culture, but also being from Hong Kong and not having grown up in mainland China. It was also really interesting to be able to have this defamiliarized gaze at structures of family and customs and how late do men come home. And just observing practices like that that are so different than the traditions from Hong Kong. And as a filmmaker, I felt very privileged at the time that we made the film. It was during the pandemic where no foreigners were allowed into the country. But because I was a Hong Kong citizen and had a permit to go into China, I travel freely, aside from the quarantine, the three and two week quarantines that we had to endure to get in and out of the country. But I felt like I was making an impossible documentary at that time that no, no one else from abroad would be able to make because of this ancestral connection that I have with this place. And so that was a real honor. And I know that our participants, had I been a real outsider, would never have allowed us into their lives in the ways that we did. And so that kind of solidarity of at least how we appeared and that the stakes were same for my family in Hong Kong as it is for them. I think that sort of being from the same place played a big role in the kind of access that we achieved in Mistress Dispeller that I know would not have been possible otherwise. And I feel very fortunate. And it was really fascinating to sort of re explore my own cultural roots. You know, this is the land from which my ancestors came, even though with our history in Hong Kong, we've become separated from it as a British colony. But it was really fascinating and I loved the experience, despite the stresses of producing a film like this, as you can imagine.
- [07:43]
B
Yeah, yeah. That sense of curiosity and observation, but also intimacies, those things are all present in the film. For those who haven't yet seen your film, what is a mistress dispeller?
- [07:56]
C
Yes, that's a great question. So I found out about this phenomenon, which is a new industry that's cropped up only in the last decade in China. China, to meet this growing demand of largely women wives who are finding that their partners are cheating on them or have mistresses, and they want to save their families and they want to preserve the family unit. And so they hire a woman or man called a mistress dispeller, who infiltrates their family life under a false identity and gets to know their husband and his mistress, or their spouse and their mistress, and under that false identity, over time, gains their ear and befriends them and slowly influences them psychologically to end the affair of their own accord, Seemingly of their own accord. So that is what our film documents. It's a Rashomon of this love triangle being torn apart and mended back together by the Mistress Dispeller from the perspective of the wife and then the husband. And finally, the shocking reveal is the mistress that we were able to get access to her story and her view of this relationship to. And that's the industry that has existed and is now called Mistress Dispelling. And it's really interesting because it's a very expensive service to employ. It costs, on average, at least with the Mistress Dispeller that we filmed, US$20,000 for her to work on a case which will take her three to four months to resolve, quote, unquote.
- [09:28]
B
Wow. Did you connect with this company that ultimately has, as a client, Mrs. Lee? And then, you know, they kind of said, well, here are the cases we're working on. And then you talked about which one you might ultimately film or how did it get narrowed down to this one?
- [09:44]
C
Yeah. When Emma Miller, my producer, and I, and Maggie Lee, our Chinese producer, embarked on this project, we knew that casting would be the most difficult challenge because our goal was to authentically document a case from beginning to end. So at first, we wanted to lessen the burden on Teacher Wang, who is the Mistress Dispeller that Maggie Lee found for us. From day one of our scouting trip with her, she was already able to get us access to a husband, a wife, and a mistress from the same case, the tail end of a case, to be on camera. And that's when we knew that we would have the opportunity to create this remarkable nonfiction film because of the kind of access and trust that she had with her clients. But it did take us three years of following Teacher Wang and filming with at least six other cases over those three years before we landed on our central couple that's in the film. And Teacher Wang, she has a hundred clients per year incoming. And out of that hundred, one or two would say yes to us each year. And that's how we got to film those six couples over the course of three years. There was a time when we tried to control the outcomes more in that Maggie tried to search for wives or husbands who were in need of Mistress Dispelling services on her own, and then pitched them about the idea of having someone like a mistress dispeller. Teacher Wang come into their lives. But what we found with that approach, when we were trying to cast ourselves, was that there was no trust in Teacher Wang because they hadn't come to Teacher Wang on their own organically. And so the scenes that we got with them were not authentic. And so we quickly shed that approach and we surrendered to Teacher Wang's own organic pool of incoming clients and relied on that. And that's why it took so long to make this film too, because out of 100 cases, only one or two would agree. And even within those one or two, we always gave them the option to drop out. And we always respected their wishes by the end of the process if they didn't wish to be featured anymore. And so it did take us three years until we finally found Mr. And Mrs. Li and Fei Fei, who even by the end of the process, still agreed to remain featured, despite the fact that there's so much deception involved in Teachers Wang's work that when she enters their lives, at first they couldn't have known what her role was as we had begun filming, and that they were approached to be in a film about modern love in China. But by the end, we were able to give them the option to drop out if they wanted to after they understood her real role in their lives. And we had that ability because we had filmed over three years with so many different couples. And also as a backup plan, we also filmed many different love industries across China, including divorce lawyers, matchmakers, dating camps, and even BDSM workshops. We were really sort of like stretching a really wide net so that we had options to work with at the end of the day about a film
- [12:45]
B
about love in China, Pretext and deception is something I do want to get into. But thank you for sort of setting up this love triangle between the three. And I want to start with your opening shot and opening sequence because basically, I fell. Speaking of love, I fell completely helplessly in love with your movie watching just the opening shot. And then I was even more bowled over by the entire opening sequence. The film opens with an extreme closeup of a middle aged Asian woman getting her hair blow dried in a salon. And the woman blinks and a tear falls down her cheek and another falls. She never hears a word. We hear the strains of a famous aria by Puccini. Then we cut to a forest and a flock of birds fly through the frame. I have no idea what this shot's doing here at this point, but it's utterly inspired. And then we have the film's title. And then you Cut to a nighttime drone shot of an urban landscape in a high rise apartment building. And the camera moves in on one of the lit windows. And then we cut to a two shot of the same woman we'd seen in the first shot, and a man sitting at a table eating a meal. And the first words spoken by the woman are, I got a new haircut. Didn't you notice? And he says, you had your hat on. So I couldn't tell. In this one sequence, there's so much going on and the story of a million marriages. I think, if not more. Can you talk about the opening shot and just this entire sequence?
- [14:22]
C
Oh, I'm so glad that that sequence resonated with you. It's also my favorite sequence in the film, one of my favorites. And huge credit has to go to our editor, Charlotte Munchbankson, who had also edited all that Breeze and Truffle Hunters. The precision of those images juxtaposed against each other and the essay and the language of the film that's already establishing for audiences from the beginning to what kind of film you're about to experience is impeccable on her part. And I will say, that first shot with the wife where she's crying in the salon, that was literally our first day of filming with her. And I think she was probably reflecting about the circumstances by which a film crew has entered her life, that she's been betrayed by the love of her life. And it was such a poignant moment and shows the level of vulnerability that these brave participants were willing to be on camera in such. In circumstances that would normally be enshrouded in shame and secrecy. And so I feel like that openness and bravery that she had is on full display from that first shot. And the second shot is then the drone zooming into the building at night. And you see all these tiny apartments in that building, and you see movement in each of them. And that's to suggest we're honing in on one story of a domestic setting of many. And then finally it pulls out into the wilderness of these storks flying across the screen. It was really important for me from the beginning. I always imagined that wilderness would play a role, a textural role in this film, because I knew that these scenes, like Teacher Wang's work as a Mistress dispeller, is so dialogue heavy and sometimes can be quite claustrophobic. It's hour and hours long conversations of people unhashing their emotional lives and not saying what they mean exactly, or saying what they mean. And then to pull out into the wilderness is to add this existential element to their story, beyond the petty gossip, beyond the jealousies that we experience in our own personal lives, that these love stories are unfolding across the land of China and from a place that is both indifferent to our petty squabbles, but also deeply fundamental to why we care. We're animals at the end of the day, seeking connection, opportunities, procreation and resources, and finding disconnection in the environments that we're in, whether they're structured like at that building and how we're stacked on top of each other. It's just human nature, I think, to love and seek love and sometimes to have your heart broken. And so that's what that sequence sort of meant to me.
- [16:55]
B
I felt the existential in that moment and also later on in the film and the contrast between the urban landscape as well, and sort of the anonymity of just all these people and just the sort of organism of masses of people and the intimacy of this individual group of three people. When Mrs. Lee goes to meet with Teacher Wang, the Mistress dispeller, Wang says the most urgent matter at hand is how to inject me organically into your family. That's my favorite line in the movie. It's. It's kind of bizarre how she phrases this, the idea of injecting her organically into the family. And yet, you know, as bizarre as it sounds, it's true, isn't it, that that's kind of the key to this whole thing working?
- [17:45]
C
Yeah, that's the whole premise of Mistresses filling is predicated on that line. And I've asked her, you know, you are basically a family counselor. Why don't you just position yourself that way? Her explanation was that the sentiment that domestic shame should not be made public is so strong in China that if she were to enter as an external professional, as a therapist coming in to solve a family crisis, she would be rejected and ejected immediately. But by positioning herself through a lie that she is a long lost friend of the wife's who happens to study psychology, or is positioning herself as an insider their circles, that she's more likely to be welcomed in and trusted as one of them. And so that's partly why that sort of injection that's organic is so important, which is both cultural and also sort of the genius behind Mistress dispelling.
- [18:42]
B
So here's a difference between how I felt when I watched it in fall 2024 and this week. I think something that's changed in our culture is AI AI has become a much bigger presence and this time, when I watched the film, I thought, you know, in some ways, Teacher Wang could be replaced by an AI bot. Now, I wonder, because rather than a marriage counselor, because the AI bot would allow the kind of take away the element of shame, because you could just do it privately and seek advice from the AI bot. I don't know. I don't. Not to go too far down that rabbit hole, but I'm just curious. We have been hearing more about AI playing a role in advising people on relationships, and I'm just curious if that's something you thought about.
- [19:27]
C
No, I actually haven't thought about that at all. Because I've always credited so much of her magic to be this psychological manipulation in which she is advising people in circumstances like tea houses and doing favors, running errands for them, little errands that help them allow her into their life. But I. I'm sure you're not wrong that someday AI would be able to exact that kind of manipulation and sort of, you know, sidestep the issue of shame. But for now, I don't see her work being replaceable yet, because she seems like such a mastermind and a puppet master, and how she is able to foretell 10 steps ahead how every person is going to behave and how they're going to react, and her ability to read human emotions on the face, which I'm sure maybe someday AI will be able to do that, too. But for now, I feel like she's not quite replaceable. She's tried to scale her business to apprentices so that she doesn't have to do so much of this labor. It's in one of the scenes where she's trying to teach this younger woman how to be a mistress dispeller. And it was simply impossible because there's something intangible about her talent and her depth of perception about human nature and how people will behave.
- [20:48]
B
Yeah, I mean, it's amazing. There's a scene where she kind of lays things out for Mrs. Lee, her client, and she says, all my steps are orchestrated. And lo and behold, you know, things do happen pretty much as she says they will. And even Fei Fei, the mistress, later says Wang may see things more clearly than any of us and is guiding us somehow, but I'm not able to perceive it. Were you. Because you're watching this unfold in these orchestrated steps as they happen. Were you surprised that this unfolded kind of exactly as she said they would?
- [21:26]
C
I mean, we had witnessed six other cases by the point that we had come to film this one. And While production was incredibly stressful and tenuous in that we always approached every day as if it was our last, because we could lose access at any moment. And, you know, all these clients, they all only agreed to a few days of filming at first, and it was really just on set interpersonal chemistry that allowed us to film them for four whole months. But Wang always prepared us, like, we don't know how they're going to react. You know, even in the film, you see, sometimes she loses a little bit of control, where the mistress is not choosing to have lunch with her or dinner with her as she had planned, or the mistress, Fei Fei, kicks her out of the room at one point when the husband and her finally meet after a month of having been kept apart. And I think I will say, though, that somehow, and she says this too, when there is such a will that you're willing to hire someone for this service and pay the amount of money that they do, there's such a will to save your family that it usually works out. And some of it may be cultural in the ways that she's able to predict how people behave by what strings she pulls, and that there is oftentimes a will on the husband's part to not leave his marriage for his mistress, for the shame that that might bring. And in some ways, it's both predictable on the larger scale that most of the relationships that we witnessed her repair unfolded in a similar way. But for us, in production, it was constantly unpredictable in how people would react to the camera's presence and also Wang's interventions.
- [23:03]
B
You alluded to this earlier, but I want to get more into this idea of pretext and lies and deception, which are a big part of this business. And obviously the original act, the act of engaging in an extramarital affair is an act of deception, full of lies. Mrs. Lee initially, of course, lies about who Wang is to create a pretext so that her husband won't question who she is. You mentioned that pretext. Later, Mr. Lee himself will make up a different lie, that Wang is his cousin, to create a pretext for his mistress to meet with her, and on it goes. Presumably, there were instances where pretexts were used by you at various times to explain your presence and what the film was about. You mentioned that it was said initially it was a film about modern love in China. Can you talk about the key role that pretext and lies play once this mistress dispeller gets involved?
- [23:57]
C
Yeah. Secrets and Lies by Mike Lee was a big reference. There's one scene in Secrets and Lies. That's that famous eight minute scene where Hortense is speaking with her mother and they're both facing the camera. And that's where they come to a confrontation about her birth and her bring her birth mother. And I think secrets and lies are so much a part of this film. The premise of it and in terms of how we made the film, we never actually directly ever misrepresented ourselves to the participants when we were trying to get access. It was always through Teacher Wang and her business partner sort of negotiating and presenting our documentary to the participants and the husband and Fei Fei, the mistress. They were approached not by us, but by Wang's business partner whether they wanted to be in a film about modern love in China. And at that stage we did not know that they would be the main characters of this film. And I think they also imagined that they might be, you know, a small part in an ensemble film, which at that point was entirely possible because we had filmed with so many incredible characters and people. But it's interesting in the way that over those four months we never had to, I think midway through the husband probably figures out sort of Wang's role, but he goes along with it because it's in his interest too.
- [25:15]
B
That was going to be my next question. Wants to see when did he figure it out Exactly.
- [25:20]
C
But you know, nothing is said on the surface. Everything is just simmering below and unspoken. With Fei Fei, I think she figures it out. My suspicion, and this is, you know, is three quarters of the way through filming and you know that scene with the breakup scene where the husband is attempting to break up with her and she kicks Wang out. I think by then, even though on the surface she's telling Wang, I trust you. I think you're a capable and good person. You're working in my interest. It's all a lot of doublespeak because I think by that point she probably knows that Wang is trying to gouge them apart and so she kicks her out so that she can have a face to face confrontation with the husband that she hasn't seen in it in a month with our cameras present, which I can't imagine what that must have felt like having been in situations in love and struggle in love myself. But it's like this gradual process where people are smart and people understand things over time, but there's a willingness to go along with the secrets and lies because it serves their interests in different ways. And so it was only in the master interview at the end, when we could have our final real heart to Hearts with these participants and talk to them like, what did you think? What did you feel? Why did you choose to be in the documentary? What were you thinking at this stage? And how did you feel when you found out that we really could have this direct communication with them? Because throughout those four months, we actually kept our heart to hearts or, like, real talk to a real minimum, so that it was just small talk on set and being friendly and being nice because we didn't want to inadvertently disrupt the mistress dispelling process by saying too much or create a conflict of interest by bonding with one character over the other and creating a triangulation scenario. So that was what was really fascinating. Fascinating about this production because of the secrets and lies that are part of Wang's work. But us wanting to maintain some kind of objectivity as the film crew bearing witness to this case as it unfolded, and wanting to respect people's agency and also the boundaries that they've set up for themselves and how they're choosing to operate.
- [27:27]
B
It's interesting to hear that there was this master interview with each of the three after the fact. Because, honestly, it was only in the story, most recent viewing, that I realized, oh, there's this. There's a different kind of voiceover happening here.
- [27:40]
C
Yeah.
- [27:41]
B
These are obviously interviews with you, but I didn't necessarily think that they happened after it was all over.
- [27:48]
C
Yeah. It had to be, because we didn't want to jeopardize. Yeah.
- [27:52]
B
And otherwise you would have been in this privileged position of knowing certain information that other people didn't know, and then that's a different relationship that.
- [28:00]
C
Yeah.
- [28:01]
B
Would complicate things on many levels.
- [28:04]
C
Yeah.
- [28:04]
B
But I will say I love the way those were just very subtly worked into the film, those master interviews.
- [28:10]
C
Thanks. Wong Kar Wai's Chungking Express and his films were a huge inspiration in the Mood for Love. The way that he uses voiceover woven into his characters so that it deepens your understanding of what they might be thinking or feeling beyond the surface. So we felt like we had to use those.
- [28:28]
B
You've alluded to several of my favorite films of that era, and it makes a lot of sense because the film is very cinematic. And hearing you talk about those influences of Mike Lee and Wong Kar Wai, it makes a lot of sense.
- [28:44]
C
Yeah. No, even that wilderness shot, that was inspired directly from one of his early films. Wong Kar Wai's early films, where Leslie Churn is in I'm. It's blanking. Oh, Days of Being Wild. It's Days of Being Wild. Where he also opens his films and Happy together with these gigantic wilderness forest shots that add this layer that's subconscious, I think, that allows you to get into the subterranean of people's inner lives.
- [29:12]
B
Let's talk about Fei Fei for a minute. Because at one point, Wang, Teacher Wang says about her work, in every case, the mistress is always the most unpredictable factor. Once their emotions are triggered, we can't control them. And again, like just her formulation of language is so fascinating to me. And the use of the word control here and just matter of factly talking about controlling another human being is a bit jarring. What. What were your thoughts about just how she approached the mistress in these situations and this whole idea of control.
- [29:52]
C
She's a real contradiction, Teacher Wang, because in practice, the way she approaches the mistresses that she works with in her cases, she approaches them with so much openness, friendship and compassion and non judgment, as if she's really looking out for their interests. And that's why they open themselves to her. And that's why they end up trusting her and thanking her in their lives by even by the end of the prophet process, when seemingly she's worked against their interests by peeling them away from their lover. But I think ultimately a lot of these young women find that it's better that they're no longer in an extramarital affair. And she sort of helps guide them psychologically out of that. But at the same time, and that's what makes her so effective at her work, that she sees them as the ones needing the most help and being in the most pain, as she says, even more than the wife, the fact that they're willing to betray themselves by giving themselves away to someone who is not actually reciprocating in a deep way. But on the other hand, when she describes her work with the mistresses, it's in this very sort of warlike, colder language that seems at odds with how she approaches them. So I think that's what's so fascinating about her as a character. She has this cold precision in how she deals with people. She's able to step back and see the chess pieces move and she's trying to win. But at the same time, she is super empathetic and approaches people with kindness. And that's why she succeeds.
- [31:25]
B
Let's get to the final scene, the denouement. It occurs, of course, when the three women finally meet together in the same room and you're there to film it. Can you talk about what led up to this final meeting and your approach to shooting it? Yeah, you did shoot the film, right?
- [31:41]
C
Yes, I did shoot the film leading up to this final scene that we knew would be so important to get. In the six other cases that we filmed with, we often observed Teacher Wang bringing the wife and the mistress together. And what we understood for her doing that is to create a confrontation that forges this unlikely bond between the two women. A sort of like grudging respect that's developed by just simply facing your opposition. And that in some ways, that. That hopefully mitigates the conflict between these two people. And it was so important for us to be able to film that culmination between Mrs. Lee and Fei Fei in this case. And the way that we prepared it was I had two cameras, which was the case in all the scenes that you see. We had two cameras set up where we knew where they were going to enter and where the dialogue would take place. And then we would hit record and then we would exit the room. The entire crew for all the scenes. For most of the scenes in the film, especially the sensitive ones where we don't know how it's going to unfold, the crew, including myself, are never in the room so that they could have as much privacy and as little self consciousness, despite being filmed as possible. And what you're seeing on camera, especially in that confrontation scene, is them trying to be their best selves. They're performing their most dignified version of themselves. But then you see their raw, darker emotions creep up and break through, crack through that facade. You know when they talk about throwing cups of tea at each other and then having martial arts to defend themselves, but all in this tone that is muted and calm, and I think a large part due to the camera's presence recording them. And I find watching this footage of human beings navigate and try to act with such great love. That's what Teacher Wang says, act with great love. Love because you don't be your petty self. And then seeing them go wildly off script of what Teacher Wang has tried to instruct them to be, I find that fascinating and humorous and wonderful and deeply human.
- [33:50]
B
I really had no idea you guys weren't in the room.
- [33:52]
C
Yeah, that's how he got all the scenes.
- [33:54]
B
Yeah, yeah. It's incredible. It's also interesting because at one point, Teacher Wang turns to the Camerons, breaks the fourth wall. So you weren't even in the room when she did that?
- [34:04]
C
Well, we were like in a room behind. So she's calling out to us.
- [34:07]
B
Yeah, yeah. Later on she says, not sure if it's to both of them or which One. But she says, you can tell her. You can tell us or you can tell it to the camera. And in that moment, I'm like, is Elizabeth and this film also the mistress Dispeller.
- [34:25]
C
Yeah. I think a documentarian's role. People have often compared it to that, but. But I think the case would have. All of them, in their master interviews, said the case would have unfolded in the way that it did had we been there or not. It's maybe simply the speed with which it unfolded and the convictions that people had in going back, as Wang would say, to their original tracks that they were meant to be on. That perhaps it was a catalyst in prompting conversations in the way that Wang does that. That they would never have in their normal lives. Even that final scene where the wife is walking away with her husband in the park, where they're trying to repair the relationship without speaking about it. The wife is reminiscing about when they were in their 30s and falling in love. At first, I don't think she would ever have. I never, ever directed them what to say or do, but I don't think she would have ever brought that up had the cameras not been there. And it was an opportunity for her to try to broach sentimental subject matter that was then rebuffed, unfortunately, by the husband. But I love that moment because it's so devastating to see two people at the end of this film about to embark on the next 30 years of their life. And what will they do? And there's a sense of hope there, too, I think, even as people have their shortcomings that they have that can't be resolved in the matter of four months.
- [35:47]
B
It's ambiguous, though, because as you say, she's rebuffed. And he says, essentially says, let's just not talk about it.
- [35:56]
C
Yeah. Which can also maybe be a way to keep a relationship going, too. The things that you sweep under the rug, the things that you don't address to keep the peace.
- [36:05]
B
I agree. But I also was wondering when he said earlier on. And I think this was when Fei. Fei confronted him. He says, basically, I don't. I don't have a body anymore. I'm just.
- [36:18]
C
Life is not my own.
- [36:19]
B
My life is not my own. Wow.
- [36:23]
C
I'm sure that's a relatable sentiment to many people who find themselves in middle age and have obligations and duties to their family and the oaths that they made years ago and the expectations of what role you should play in society and how you should love or not love. And I find that, yeah, I was very moved by that. Even if he is, you know, ostensibly the bad guy in this situation, in
- [36:48]
B
the end, they get back together. Mr. And Mrs. Lee, as you say, did you ever think it was going to end any other way? Were there moments where you've wondered.
- [36:57]
C
I mean, one could wonder, you know, have they gotten back together after Wang has left their lives and after we've exited, which is something we could never know, but because I do think there was a really strong bond between them and a real desire to be around each other. You can see the husband's face light up every time he's around her. It's like he can't help himself. He says in the beginning of the film, I don't want to divorce my wife. I do love my family. So I knew. I think I knew that he would not. He was trying to struggle against his own desires in order to honor his commitment to his family. And I'm very glad to see that he succeeded in a small way within the course of this film.
- [37:39]
B
So after making this film and watching these mistress dispellers do their thing, do you think mistress dispellers are a good thing? Or do you think marriages should rise and fall more organically, to borrow a phrase from Teacher Wang?
- [37:54]
C
It's interesting because I've shown this film around the world at different festivals, different cultures and countries, and it's raised a fundamental question to me. Like in Denmark, so many women came up to me afterwards in their middle age and said, you know, my husband left me for a younger woman. Because in Danish culture, once you're no longer happy, you have no obligation to stay in a marriage. Whereas in Asia, when the film has been shown, it's presumed that they would get back together for better or for worse. And I don't know what is a better lived life, one where you stick through the hard times, but maybe you're just a little less happy, or one where you don't stick through the hard times. And then I don't know what emotions consume you in your daily life after that, or if you pull back, you know, what is happiness to you? And I don't have answers for that. But I do think seeing audience reactions from around the world, it's prompted this question in me, like, what is the best way to live life and approach love? And which path that culturally leads to happier people or more healthy society? And I don't have the answers to that. But I'm glad that this film has taken me to this place and led me to contemplate how one Might want to live live one's life. To your question about whether mistress dispellers are bad or good, I think it's ethically challenged profession because of course this deception is unregulated. But I, over time, I've come to see that there is something beautiful or gentle about the way a conflict is resolved where guns are not blazing, nobody is accusing anybody. It's just allowing everybody to be who they are. The downside is no accountability. But the upside is that by the end of this conflict, by never directly confronting each other, which of course has its costs, but you're allowing all three parties to gently exit a situation while saving face, as they say. But what I think is behind the word saving face is preserving this sense of dignity. You're not tearing someone down completely. And I think there's something really gentle about that kind of harmoniousness that's achieved by the end, which is so opposite to how western culture deals with conflicts.
- [40:04]
B
Yeah. And even Fei. Fei, who actually gets quite philosophical, I think in your final master interview with her, she says about Teacher Wang, her influence is like a gentle drizzle, soft and soundless. There's that word gentle. And the use of the word drizzle on the visual image of that for me, brought back the tear from the opening shot. So I think something similar could be said about your film. It's like a tear falling gently down a cheek. It's a true work of art. And I want to just say congratulations, Elizabeth. Thank you so much for being with me today and I wish you all the best.
- [40:46]
C
Thank you for your beautiful insights and I love the way you portrayed the film.
- [40:51]
B
Do you have a hidden gem documentary that you think maybe doesn't quite get the attention that it deserves?
- [40:57]
C
This is one from a few years ago. It's called Gunda by Victor Kosakovsky. I don't know if you've seen it, but it's this gorgeous black and white film about a mother pig's life on a farm and the devastating ending of a filmmaker documenting her children being taken away from her. I just thought that was such a penetrating portrait of non human life and our role in exploiting that life that I wish more people had seen had it not been for the pandemic. Because I think it's such an important film and beautiful work of art.
- [41:33]
A
Top Docs is a production of Willie Meade. This Episode was produced by Ken Jacobson and Mike Merrill and edited by M.