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If your husband’s having an affair, this woman will get rid of her: the gripping film about China’s ‘mistress dispellers’
Amy HawkinsThu, 21 August 2025 at 12:00 PM SGT7-min read
‘From one angle, it’s an incredibly graceful way of resolving a conflict’ … Teacher Wang in Mistress Dispeller.Photograph: PR
Not long into Mistress Dispeller, a quietly jaw-dropping new documentary from director Elizabeth Lo, the film’s eponymous character lays out her thesis for ridding marriages of troublesome extra lovers. “When someone becomes a mistress,” she says, “it’s because they feel they don’t deserve complete love. She’s the one who needs our help the most.”
Wang Zhenxi, a mistress dispeller based in north-central China’s Henan province, is one of a growing number of self-styled professionals who earn a living by intervening in people’s marriages – to “dispel” them of intruders. “I was looking for a love story set in China,” says Lo, speaking from Hong Kong. “I thought it would be really interesting to [explore] the peripheral gaze of a mistress.”