Love Sex Aur Dhokha Movie Review

Cast: Anshuman Jha, Shruti, Raj Kumar Yadav, Neha Chauhan, Arya Devdutta, Herry Tangri, Amit Sial

Director: Dibakar Banerjee

LSD - A Potent High

LSD is like one of those spicy foods, full of strong flavor and vibrant color. Does good only when you eat within your limit.

We get to see the lives of three sets of people from three different angles.

In the beginning we witness Rahul (Anshuman Jha), a small town guy aspiring to make it big as a director. He makes a short film and ends up falling for the heroine of his film Shruthi (Shruti). For Rahul, Shruthi is his eternal Simran. However, their love story's end is nowhere close to that of Raj and Simran's!

Next we get to see Shruthi's best friend Rashmi's(Neha Chauhan) life. She's right in her very own way until she falls for Adarsh(Raj Kumar Yadav) a creamy swindler. This is the love story that ends with betrayal.

Then there's journalist Prabhat (Amit Sial), who every single day continues to bear the wrong effects of the story that he broke. It shook the whole nation, changed the ruling party but failed bring any positive uplift in his life. He is trying to revive some of his lost respect in the office with the help of Naina(Arya Devdutta) who's scorned, thanks to Loki Local(Herry Tangri), a pop-star who promises to feature her in his music video if she 'compromises' but eventually doesn't.

The film moves in a non-linear pattern but steers clear of awkward abruptness and has the quality to absorb you completely.

Yay!

The three lives are beautifully interconnected and you can't help realize it's the product of a well-researched screenplay (Dibakar Banerjee,Kanu Behl). The camera-work(Nikos Andritsakis) is a welcome initiative although it's not thoroughly innovative.

The pace is good thanks to a water-tight script (Urmi Juvekar) and the running time of approximately two hours only serves as an advantage.

Most of the newcomers have been pushed to give a good performance and some of the applaud goes to the director(Dibakar Banerjee) here.

The dialogues are sharp but at times a tad stinging to the eardrum.

There's a lot of negativity in the film, and maybe it's due to the nature of human psyche but the bickering and bashing don't fail to entertain you for even a single minute.

Yawn…

The movie is majorly misogynistic. The only authoritative female character of the editor too has been shown in a negative light.

The title track gives you a wrong impression of the movie's overall music (Sneha Khanwalkar) score. Except for that track none of the songs really catch your attention. In a film like this, there's a lot of scope for experimenting when it comes to editing (Namrata Rao) but it hasn't been explored fully.

The aftertaste of LSD is weariness. The initial high of entertainment wears off just too quickly and you need to have Godzilla-skin to ask for it the second time.

The film basically deals with the invasion of cameras in our lives but just the negatives have been highlighted. There are positive facets of it too like security issues but somehow they never got mentioned here.

Yes or no?

If your appetite for Bollywood films includes the need for a lot of things raw, you can go for it.

Rating: ***

Reporter and Author: Susan Jose