Aren’t movies generally supposed to entertain? Aren’t we supposed to feel happy, sad, or moved by some sort of emotion at the end of a movie? What if that emotion is disgust? What if you feel like you have just digested a very bitter pill? That, ladies and gentleman, is what LSD was for me...and yet, I couldnt take my eyes off the screen for a second!
PLOT:
There are 3 interconnected stories that outline the love, sex, dhokha theme. Each story has these three elements, but in diminishing quantity!
The first story is the sweetest, closest to love, about a raw young film maker making a movie, falling in love with his heroine, having a filmy, yet real courtship, deciding to throw caution to the winds and marry her, taking on her mighty father.....and THEN comes the downward spiral of the story (and the movie), into the seemy world of betrayal and sex. The next story is about an innocent shop assistant being caught in an mms sex scandal. And then the last story (love has almost disappeared from the movie by now!), about the casting couch and a sting operation.
Wont tell you much more about the story...watch it and interpret it as you will!
MY TAKE:
Dibaker Banerjee ( the director) hasnt taken a step wrong since he first directed Khosla ka Ghosla. That hilarious, realistic movie was followed by the entertaining and quirky Oye Lucky...and now Love Sex aur Dhokha. To me, it seems like Dibaker had LSD on his mind right from the beginning of his film making career, and was warming up his audience, with his first two movies, to prepare them for the complete body blow LSD is!
It is NOT a movie that warms the cockles of your heart, even though the first story starts off all innocent and full of chuckles like Khosla ka Ghosla was. From the time the first narrative takes a plunge into dark territory, the rest of the terrain the movie crosses is all murky, forbidding, and very ignoble. There is just a hint of goodness in the narrative, but for the most part, what you come across is the underbelly of humanity.
That being said, what a movie it is! I thought Dev D was the definitive movie that crossed all borders of innovation... the dirty realism in LSD makes Dev D look theatrical in comparison. All three vignettes look like they are straight out of the real world, with actual people in them instead of actors.
The filming technique( using a handheld camera, choppy editing) has been seen in world cinema before. But it is LSD that uses that technique to maximum effect, to the point where one feels like it is I, the viewer, who is behind the camera and being the disgusting peeping Tom!
I am still trying to digest the impact of the movie..and I think it is going to be a few days before I STOP feeling like I am a salacious voyeur interested in the sordid details of peoples intimate lives. THAT is the power of this movie..it shows a mirror to ME, the individual, who is responsible for creating this society where anything goes in the name of entertainment.
Watch it...be shocked, enlightened, AND disgusted!