Cast: Anshuman Jha, Shruti, Raj Kumar Yadav, Neha Chauhan, Amit Sial, Arya Devdatta and Henri Tangri
The movie involves three separate sub-plots. However director/script-writer makes it beautifully interesting as the three stories crisscross each other, albeit just tangentially so. In the first story, a film student Rahul falls for Shruti, the leading lady of his diploma project movie. The two fall in love during the shooting of what is Rahul’s modern day yet comical take on one of the greatest Bollywood hits ‘Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge’. In the second story, a jobless youth working at the departmental store of his uncle, and claiming to be a MBA, is a habitual con. To make some quick - and hence unfair – buck, he plots to make a sex MMS video by duping one of the girls working at the store. The third story is about an Indian pop star, going intriguingly by the name of ‘Luki Local’, who asks aspiring models for a ‘compromise’ in return of casting them in his video album; and how one of such models, after feeling exasperated, decides to do a sting operation on him.
The screenplay of the movie is something that you have never seen on the Indian screen before, and for a few exceptions which you might be able to count on your fingertips, this is a new even by Hollywood standards. The film is shot digitally, with deliberately patchy camera angles and camera jerks. Also, the screenplay is a fine interplay of documentary style and the regular story telling style (a la ‘The Blair Witch Project’). It is this aspect of the movie, which is so fascinating, as it is so intricately done.
With new sex scandals and sting operations coming out in open day in and day out, the movie couldn’t have come at a better time. The movie takes a dig on issues like sting operations, casting couch, the overzealousness of hype-hungry media, MMS scandals, deceit and honour killings. It is also, in part a comment on today’s society hooked on to the high of reality shows and titillating voyeurism.
The tone of the movie is bold, disturbing, dark and yet originally witty. There are some genuinely funny moments, like when Rahul is forced to put an ‘item number’ in the ‘mehndi’ scene of his movie. The dialogues part, which though is more like a part of an everyday conversation of lot of us, is absolutely refreshing and riveting. In fact, it is one of the foremost elements making the movie an engaging view. The freshness aspect of the movie extends to and emanates from its cast as well. All most all of them are unknown faces, yet each of them delivers a superb performance. They play the roles of everyday life characters to a T. Just like in his previous ventures Khosla ka Ghosla and Oye Lucky, the setting and mannerisms of Dibakar’s characters are quintessentially Delhite.
Dibakar wonderfully manages to stay original in his third movie. Watch this movie for its freshness and boldness. Throwing up some disturbing questions that plague our modern day society, the movie is aptly acronymed LSD (which also stands for a psychedelic drug Lysergic acid diethylamide, or LSD) and the pun is intentional. Go, get a high.
Rating: 3.5/5
