Advertisement
Star cast: Rank newcomers.
Advertisement
What’s Good: The bold theme, but censors have deleted many of the bold scenes and swear words.
What’s Bad: The censors’ scissors; the slightly confusing drama; the shaky camera work
Verdict: Had the censors not played spoilsports, the film would have had some voyeuristic appeal atleast. But now, it will not even sail safe
Loo break: Not really, lest you miss some ‘hot’ scenes or whatever remains of them!
Alt Entertainment’s Love Sex Aur Dhokha (A) is, as the title suggests, a story about love, sex and deceit. Actually, there are three different stories and the characters in the three stories meet somewhere some time.
Rahul (Anshuman Jha) and Shruti (Shruti) are making a film as part of their media studies. He is the director and she is the heroine. The two fall in love, elope and get married, much to the ire of Shruti’s parents. The second story is about Adarsh (Raj Kumar Yadav) who is trying to shoot a pornographic clip involving himself and Rashmi (Neha Chauhan) who works in a departmental store. The intention is to sell the pornographic CD, made by using the security cameras installed in the store, for money which he can use to pay off his creditors. Even while he is wooing Rashmi, a shootout takes place in the store. Rashmi takes charge and saves a life.
The third story is about Prabhat (Amit Sial), a sting journalist contemplating suicide. In one of his several suicide bids, he meets item girl Naina (Arya Devdutta) who is also attempting suicide because she had been fooled into sleeping with Loki Local (Herry Tangri) in the hope of getting to star in a music video by him, but the video had finally gone to a Russian girl. Prabhat and Naina then join hands to expose Loki Local with a sting operation on him.
The film has three tales which could stand independent of each other but which somehow meet. By its very concept, such a film will find it difficult to appeal to the audience. The narrative style is also quite crooked as a result of which the audience will get confused about the goings on. Also, the hand-held camera with which the film has been shot, shakes so much that the viewer actually gets a headache while watching the film. All these major drawbacks could still have been acceptable had the sex scenes and the four-letter words not been deleted by the censors. But with the love-making scene having been camouflaged by the censors, there is no voyeuristic pleasure for the audience to experience. Even the foul language has been bleeped to almost negate the impact of the words. Therefore, there is precious little left for the masses to enjoy in the film.
No doubt, the filmmaking style of Dibakar Banerjee is different but the screenplay, penned by Banerjee and Kanu Behl, leaves so much to be desired that the unique filmmaking style will not mean much, given the dull script. Even the dialogues don’t have the punch to make the audience sit up and take note. All in all, the confusing screenplay and the censors’ contribution in asking for deletions leave the film as a half-baked effort.
Anshuman Jha does a fair job. Shruti is very natural and has an expressive style of dialogue-delivery. Raj Kumar Yadav is okay. Neha Chauhan does a truly fine job. Amit Sial acts with ease. Arya Devdutta is good. Herry Tangri does what is required of him. The others provide average support.
Dibakar Banerjee’s direction caters to the class audience mainly. The sex scenes and the foul language could have been a bait for the masses but most of that has been deleted or masked or bleeped at the hands of the censors. Nikos Andritsakis’ cinematography may be realistic but it will irritate the audience no end because of the unsteadiness. Sneha Khanwalkar’s music in the title song is catchy. Editing (Namrata Rao) is good.
On the whole, Love Sex Aur Dhokha does not have the promised dose of love and sex and will, therefore, be viewed by the audience as a dhokha – a promise of voyeurism not kept.
Advertisement
