Disclaimer: Some people have understood this film, while others haven’t. Those who have understood it say that it’s meant for a select audience, and we are among those few who didn’t get it.
Love, Sex Aur Dhokha… Well, if a film has these three elements, it might work, but in Love, Sex Aur Dhokha, you only find betrayal. It’s hard to grasp what’s happening, why it’s happening, and how it’s happening. Some scenes seem related to today’s generation, but even this generation might not understand this film. That’s a big question. Why make a film that requires as much brainpower to understand as passing a UPSC exam?
Story: To put it simply, it’s beyond comprehension. Three stories run simultaneously. The first one is about a transgender person trying to make it big in the world through a reality show, which seems like a blend of Big Boss and Sa Re Ga Ma Pa. The second story is about another transgender person working in the metro, dealing with a boyfriend and a boss. The third story attempts to show the reality of the virtual world, but what’s depicted might only be understood by those who rank in the top 10 in UPSC.
Film Quality: Initially, I felt like something went wrong with the reels. Did they accidentally play an unedited version of the film? It feels like that. It’s hard to understand what’s going on. All I could gather was that TV channel TRPs can go up with fake tears in reality shows, and then comes the interval, and you wonder if you should leave, but a movie review requires watching the whole film, so I had to stay. I couldn’t understand much in the second story, and in the third, it seems like today’s generation is ready to undress on camera for virtual gaming. It’s not that the film’s screenplay is bad; it raises questions about how much effort one needs to put in to understand it. You can’t make just anything in the name of new and creative cinema. If this film was for selected audiences, it should have gone straight to OTT. There weren’t many people in the theater anyway.
Acting: New actors were given a chance, and they did okay. Swaroopa Ghosh, Paritosh Tiwari, Bonita Rajpurohit, Anubhav Singh did decent jobs, but the screenplay and direction are beyond comprehension. To increase the film’s scale, Mouni Roy, Tusshar Kapoor, and Anu Malik were also added, but they didn’t add much. Social media sensation Uorfi Javed is also in the film, but her role is smaller than her Instagram reels.
Direction: Understanding Dibakar Banerjee’s cinema isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, as people say. But brother, is there a cinema that requires scratching your head to understand? If you wanted to convey the message that the virtual world is becoming dangerous, you could have done it better. Even the generation for which this film was made will find it hard to understand. Dibakar has utterly disappointed here.
On the whole, one might go to watch the film in theatre only if one wants to doze off.