Review of “Love Sex Aur Dhokha 2”: A disorganized parody
“This camera is the key to a fortune,” a guy gestures at a CCTV camera in the 2010 film LSD, breaking the fourth wall and telling us and the actor making his feature debut next to him. This may be a good opening scene for a biography on Rajkummar Rao, if one ever happens. The statement is no longer as powerfully foreboding as it was fourteen years ago. The elderly guy informs a bored Gen Z child who would like to be selling NFTs that it has now become something senile. “Is the secret to a fortune in the camera? Of course.
The 54-year-old filmmaker of affection Sex Aur Dhokha 2 Dibakar Banerjee turns the camera on the internet and highlights people’s craving for approval, affection, and recognition. However, he often mismatches his fusion of societal realities with social media realities. The witty title “Truth Ya Naach” teases a reality program that aims to address the question, “What if Bigg Boss and Nach Baliye had a love child and all its activities were being streamed online?” Partners in dance who are stranded in a home are contestants. Every one of them has a method for turning “on-cam” or “off-cam.” It should come as no surprise that contestants get higher “approval ratings” the more on camera they are. It seems to be a crude allegory for the obsession with posting content on social media.
The main character of the episode is a transitioning woman named Noor (Paritosh Tiwari), who is very competitive. For some drama and “reality,” the producers bring her disapproving mother into the program. Everyone, from executives to line producers, is always harping on about reality. The program has all the antics of classic reality TV, but it can be accessed via an app. Anu Malik is a judge, there’s an audience vote, and there’s a mother-daughter melodrama. Sometimes the satire is hilarious, but it becomes too light at others. YouTube videos of content producers responding to the events in the program are often included between the vignette. uploading angry videos and turning situations into memes. It becomes too simplistic. The part becomes didactic as the parody begins to go off course with the story.
The second vignette begins with a mobile camera clip showing khaki-clad police officers running toward some bushes. The picture seems to be intended to evoke memories of the dubious cremation of the Hathras rape victim carried out in the middle of the night by police. Here, the victim is a transwoman named Kullu (Bonita Rajpurohit), who works as a sanitation worker at a Delhi metro station under corporate supervision.
After suspicions of Kullu being engaged in sex work surface, the case abruptly turns from being one of fighting for justice to one of damaging the company’s reputation. The tale is told in segments via video conferences as the executives choose a public relations plan. Dibakar delves further into the corpo-government relationship with writers Shubham and Prateek Vats, who are the authors of Eeb Allay Ooo! (2019). A motif that was more effectively emphasized in his most recent film, Sandeep Aur Pinky Faraar (2021). As the tone of this movie segment becomes darker and darker, social media becomes less important. In the end, Ajmal Ghayal, Kullu’s provocative boyfriend, is left for dead after being thrashed by the police.
In the last scene, which features an online gamer named Shubham alias Game Paapi (Abhinav Singh), whose subscriber count soars due to a video of his alleged gay encounter becoming viral, the creators go to social media with a fury. We enter the world of youthful influencers, who are attention-seekers. Urfi Javed even makes a cameo appearance. The plot is disjointed and attempts to follow many different storylines. Shubham is torn since his “newfound” sexuality is gaining him supporters, whether they are there to encourage or mock him. This dilemma arises when he is named as a suspect in the death of a school kid who was making fun of him on camera.
This is when the movie starts to go into Black Mirror territory. A youngster wailing in a foetal posture is the only thing visible on the VR headset. AI avatars of Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley, Che Guevara, Hitler, and Elvis Presley are all there. Scenes take place within a metaverse that is animated. Put simply, chaos ensues.
It’s obvious that the creators are openly expressing their opinion that individuals are becoming virtual world slaves via these excesses. the thought, “Did it even happen if you didn’t Instagram it?” LSD was more of a commentary on our innate voyeuristic tendencies than it was on the media. In the follow-up, the medium alternates between being the main focus and becoming irrelevant. While the tales in the 2010 original were told via a variety of cameras, including a spy cam, a CCTV, and a camcorder, in LSD 2, the point of view continues changing. Characters may take up the role of the camera at times, or they can be photographed by floaty, invisible lenses. There are not any guidelines. The secret to a fortune? Soon, the future will be shown via camera.
