Cast: Anshuman Jha, Shruti, Rajkumar Yadav, Neha Chauhan
Genre: Drama
Direction: Dibakar Banerjee
Duration: 1 hour 38 minutes
Love Sex Aur Dhoka movie review
What appears to be a Tacky commercial playing on the cinema screen soon reveals it self to be the clever start of the third installment of Dibakar Banerji’s Delhi underbelly series.
A young couple bred in India (circa: Post DDLJ) makes a mushy diploma film that pays homage to Yash Chopra. They believe so truly in the power of the ‘happy ending’ (no pun intended) that they start to become the love-lorn Raj & Simran in real life. Their obsession with the camera documents their love story 24/7. They elope and exchange vows before a god who could have been hired from a film city temple. The naive lovers even prepare to face the ire of the girls’ dangerous family, being blinded by filmy dialogues like ‘now that we are married, your father will accept us.’
Slow motion shots, romantic music swells and amusing simple-minded banter suddenly jump cut to brutal reality. Your eyes are left open, wide, like a live camera, for the rest of this triple loaded LSD trip.
Welcome to the world of reality entertainment, where the star is you. Here, sex, betrayal and murder rate higher than Ekta Kapoor’s soap operas. With such easy access to the video camera, everyone enjoys voyeuristic real-life drama.
CC tv & handheld camera’s peek shamelessly into the lives of three young couples. These stories are deftly intercut to tell an ironic tale of rose tinted love, lust that deceives and the ultimate betrayal; the realization that the viewfinder has replaced the soul.
A desperate young man needs to pay nasty thugs who are out to recover a loan. He battles his conscience while setting up to shoot a sex video with a love struck colleague at a departmental store. To make a quick buck, he abuses his access to the closed circuit camera set up and takes advantage of the girl.
A sting operation cameraman, fallen from grace before his drama hungry office, must convince a model to seek revenge from a tacky pop star. She films the arrogant singer as he abuses his position, by offering her work for sex.
Interweaving stories cleverly, ‘Love, Sex Aur Dhoka’, holds a stark mirror up to society. And just when the content starts to get uncomfortable, it uses a zoom lens to shoot deeper into the dark recesses of the soul. As the line between personal and public blurs, you realize that this trip will be an unforgettable one.
Writers Dibakar Bannerjee, Urmi Juvekar and Kanu Behl write a flawless script that is ‘ballsy’, ‘edgy’ and extremely poignant. The film is edited beautifully by Namrata Rao, whose awe-inspiring cut is supported by a great sound design by Pritam Das. The dialogue is crisp and witty and sincerely takes on the flavor of the North belt.
The performances by the young cast are shockingly convincing. Watch out for Anshuman Jha and Shruti as the couple that elopes into ‘a not so Bollywood’ climax, Raj Kumar Yadav and Neha Chauhan as the couple in the store sex video are excellent as are Amit Sial and Arya Devdutta as the cameraman and model planning a sting operation. Henry Tangdias music video "king" Loki Local is hilarious. This last story takes it time to unfold as it delivers the films thought provoking closing message.
This film clearly belongs to the unconventional craftsman that is Dibakar Banerji. He takes what must be the budget of three television episodes, works with a fresh, in-experienced cast and boldly takes sex into mainstream cinemas. Banerji scores a well-deserved hatrick after ‘Khosla Ka Ghosla’ and ‘Oye Lucky Lucky Oye’. Watch ‘LSD’ and tell your friends about it. This film may rely on your word of mouth publicity for its success.
Warning. Do not expect conventional cinema. This LSD pulls you into a trip that you can love, you can hate, but you cannot escapThe promos have been intriguing, there’s been a lot of talk about the film and its title song is this year’s ‘Emosanal Atyaachaar’. What all these things lead to, basically, is a fair degree of expectations. Does Love Sex Aur Dhokha, or its smart acronym LSD, meet its potential?
Before answering that, it’s necessary to know why LSD is an important film – it’s raw, unflinching and brutally real in its portrayal of ‘young India’; it breaks the formula in more ways than one: the filming technique is novel by Indian standards (seen recently in Paranormal Activity) and the screenplay is episodic; each story (by Urmi Juvekar) has been inspired by, what can be called, ‘newspaper headlines.’
In the first story, a film student, Rahul (Jha), whose diploma film is a kind of homage to his idol Aditya Chopra’s Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge, falls in love with his film’s lead actress, Shruti. Their love story enfolds in typical DDLJ fashion, a tyrant of a father included.
The lovers, in true filmi style, get married in a temple with the hope that Shruti’s parents will accept them once they are hitched. But cruel fate, in the form of a dhokha, awaits them.
In the second chapter, a young guy, Adarsh (Yadav), in desperate need of money fakes an affair with a saleswoman, Rashmi (C
hauhan), at a shopping store. He has a plan – to seduce the girl and shoot footage of the two having sex, and then to sell that in order to make a quick buck.
In the final part, a journalist Prabhat (Sial) wants to revive his career by performing a sting operation on pop star Loki Local (Tangri), who lures models into sexual favours with dreams of launching them in his music videos. But things go awry for Prabhat during the sting.
All three stories have a common thread: not just the fact that all of them have a bit of love, sex and an element of dhokha in them, but also that all three get captured in cameras even when the characters don’t always know about it.
In the first story, Rahul shoots his interactions with Shruti on his film camera; in the second, the CCTVs at the store capture the goings-on; and in the third, it’s the sting camera doing the job.
Banerjee weaves three inspired-by-life stories in his endeavour to entertain and shock and make a larger point about the voyeuristic nature of our society, all at the same time. LSD is edgy, provocative and honest. And for that, kudos for the filmmaker is in order.
Sadly, though, the film’s not without its flaws. It lacks the humour – or at least effective humour – that was the driving force behind Banerjee’s earlier two National award-winning films, Khosla Ka Ghosla and Oye Lucky.
The camera, which is an integral part of the script, makes its present felt in places it shouldn’t be. Why people – whether it’s a budding filmmaker or a sting journalist – would keep their cameras on at most times, even when it’s not connected to their work is hard to fathom.
The writing is inconsistent too. The homage to Chopra and his films is a big bore. The diploma film is shot like a spoof, which could have been very entertaining, but which has been executed much better in MTV shows.
The first story unfolds like any love tale would – something you have seen in umpteen films, the only novelty being the style of filming it. You wonder where it’s going finally.
Its culmination, though, is among the film’s strongest sequences. Banerjee doesn’t prepare you for it – that may justify the staid treatment leading up to it – and jolts you with its violent force. You only wish the journey till that point had been a bit more engrossing.
The second story is much more interesting. Moments between Adarsh and Rashmi are very real and the affair believable. The third story is the most entertaining. But you really yearn for LSD to unravel itself at a faster pace.
Even with a running time that is shorter than two hours, LSD drags. Once the novelty of watching the film from secret cameras wears out, you realise there’s not always much to engross you by way of a gripping narrative or smart writing.
Experimentation for the heck of it doesn’t always work. Luckily for LSD, even with its shortcomings, you can’t but help laud the effort of Banerjee and his team to dish out something ‘different.’ For the director, it’s a worthy follow-up to his earlier two successes.
The casting deserves accolades, with every actor fitting-in their roles to perfection. Singling out any of them would be pointless, with each of them putting in confident, natural performances. The title song, shown in the end, cannot be missed.
Director Milap Zaveri
your funny bone at the very outset. The story of a loser, his search for true love, his ‘naughty’ father, his ‘oversexed’ friend and his experiences at his work place [on a film set] bring a constant smile on your face. In fact, one of the key factors why the first half works is because the casting is just right and the actors carry off the assigned roles so well.
Khan is a complete natural. Satish Shah is excellent. Supriya Pilgaonkar does well too. Akshay Kumar, Priyanka Chopra, Sajid Khan and Amrita Rao make special appearances in the film.
