Three under-the-radar releases, spooky dance films and a Bay Bridge movie program are worth checking out this week.
“Mistress Dispeller,” a documentary by Elizabeth Lo (“Stray”), features a love triangle broken up by a new brand of specialist in China: a marital infidelity buster. This profession is part of an industry designed to help prevent divorce in modern China. With intimate access to her subjects, Lo follows a “mistress dispeller,” Wang Zhenxi, at work. We meet her when middle-aged Mrs. Li hires her to go undercover and investigate her husband’s unfaithfulness. Under false pretenses, Wang earns Mr. Li’s trust. Eventually, Mr. Li acknowledges that he has a mistress, a younger woman named Fei Fei. He tells Wang that while he loves his wife, Fei Fei makes him feel sunny. Performing the service she was hired for, Wang helps Mr. Li realize his marriage is worth saving and that he must stop cheating. Fei Fei acknowledges that no future exists in the relationship. As all of the parties in the triangle discuss marriage, temptation, the fear of abandonment and the hurt of betrayal, the film impresses, not only as a look at a fascinating Chinese practice but as a universal picture of love. “Mistress Dispeller” opens Friday at the Roxie Theater in San Francisco. Lo appears after the 8:40 p.m. Friday screening and the 6:10 p.m. Saturday showing. Lo also appears at a 6 p.m. Thursday screening at the Rialto Cinemas Elmwood in Berkeley.
“Love + War,” from “Free Solo” filmmakers Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin, profiles Pulitzer Prize–winning American war photographer Lynsey Addario, who documented real-life horror stories in the Middle East, Ukraine, Africa, Afghanistan and elsewhere. The film chronicles Addario’s rise in a male-dominated field and includes interviews with family members and colleagues. Addario herself discusses aesthetics, ethics, adrenaline and the essential but risky nature of her work. The film shows her in action with her camera in life-threatening situations. She has been kidnapped twice. Her photographs are most compelling: One, showing the killing of civilians in Ukraine by Russian mortar fire, made the world take note of alleged Russian war crimes when it ran on the front page of the New York Times. Others reveal tragedies involving women and children. The documentary also focuses on Addario’s balancing of career and family, showing her living in London with her husband, former journalist Paul de Bendern, and their two sons. The domestic scenes, while establishing Addario as a devoted mother, too often suggest a celebrity portrait; Addario deserves something deeper. Still, the film is an inspiring picture of an extraordinary woman committed to exposing war’s human consequences. It also demonstrates the immense importance of journalism in a world of digitally fabricated realities and truth-denying governments. “Love + War” opens Friday at the Opera Plaza Cinema. Rated R.
“The Mastermind,” written and directed by Kelly Reichardt (“Meek’s Cutoff,” “First Cow”), starts as a heist movie and turns into a man-on-the-run desperation thriller. Both components bear Reichardt’s realist, unhurried, splendidly modest stamp. Josh O’Connor plays James Blaine Mooney, an unemployed art-school dropout living in Framingham, Massachusetts, in 1970 with his wife Terri (Alana Haim) and two preteen sons (Jasper and Sterling Thompson). Dissatisfied with his life, James dabbles in art thievery. Things don’t go well after he assembles a ragtag crew (Eli Gelb, Cole Doman, Javion Allen) and steals four Arthur Dove paintings from a local museum. Reichardt directs the heist segments in her trademark naturalistic style, with unglamorous details and no dramatic music. Unexpected developments, both mundane and consequential, occur. The results are engaging and suspenseful. James is an exhilarating presence in the film’s post-heist portion in which he is on the run and morally and emotionally crumbling. His predicament takes on an existential tone; the movie becomes a quietly gripping psychothriller. Reichardt supplies period texture by weaving in news events like the Vietnam War and the protests it spawned. O’Connor is thoroughly believable as an unraveling American failure who, like many Reichardt protagonists, is living a life that hasn’t turned out as planned. Bill Camp and Hope Davis as Mooney’s respectable parents costar, joined by the always excellent John Magaro and Gaby Hoffmann in minor roles. “The Mastermind” is currently in Bay Area theaters. Rated R.
Dance Thrill Fest returns to the Roxie at 6:15 p.m. on Halloween, with its fifth edition of short dance films curated by Reyes Dance, exploring horror and related themes. More than a dozen Bay Area artists are featured: Babatunji Johnson and Charmaine Butcher; Bianca Cabrera; Brandon Graham; Clare Schweitzer; gizeh muniz and Teaque Owen; Helen Wicks; Kevin Lopez; Kira Fargas; Maya Mohsin; Ki’Shae Qetlah; Rebecca Fitton and Noah Laroia-Nguyen; and Jocelyn Reyes. Attendees are encouraged to come in costume. Treats will be served.
Six months older and significantly longer and busier than its vermillion counterpart, the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge is the subject of a presentation by Jim Van Buskirk, coauthor of “Celluloid San Francisco: The Film Lover’s Guide to Bay Area Movie Locations,” at the West Portal public library at 6 p.m. Tuesday. The program, “Starring the Bay Bridge,” includes clips from more than three dozen movies in which the bridge appears, including “Shadow of the Thin Man” (1941), “Experiment in Terror” (1961), “George of the Jungle” (1997) and “The Graduate” (1967).
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