LSD 2: Love, Sex Aur Dhokha 2 Movie Review — Sucharita Tyagi
Last time jab Dibakar Bannerjee ki LSD aayi thi 2010 mein, uska villain tha camera. Mobile phone, CCTV, spy cam, and how the video recording life is altering the idea of privacy.
How far we’ve come from that in only 14 years, and how much WORSE things are now, the new LSD tries to comprehend.
This film is WILD yall, suno aao.
LSD 2 starts off with what can only be described as an item song. A very UNIQELY Indian cinematic innovation, where actors who aren’t cast in the actual film, appear out of nowhere, dance to a song that’s already viral on Instagram, and surrounded by bright flashy lights. So, when the film opened with “Kamsin Kali”, sung by Neha and Tony Kakkar, I groaned a little. Did the studio interfere with the director’s vision, was he made to add this song starring a Tony Kakkar looking too much like Kartik Aryan AND Vijay Deverkonda curly haired brooding man, everyone a version of the whistle baja hook step? Then I played close attention to Tony Kakkar’s lyrics and found generic terms and phrases like “kamsin kali”, “julmi ne paki kalayi”, “bangle ke peeche’, “kaanta laga”, like an AI generated word salad full of SEO keywords and soon realized the disconnected randomness of the sequence is the point. Movie ki starting ke disclaimer mein jis “Kritrim bauddhikta” ka mention hai, Dibakar has dumped you straight into the middle of it. Despite the flashing lights, loud music, and energetic dance moves, what is being fed to the audience in the name of “entertainment” has never been more generic. I use the word fed because cattle behavior hi hai yeh. Backup dancers behind Dhanashree Verma are wearing copies of the viral Kendall Jenner dress Uorfi Javed had adapted once, it’s all so meta, pointed, and carefully designed, I can dedicate a whole video just doing a breakdown of Kamsin Kali, and how depressing it is.
Iss gaane ke baad, what follow is writers, Shubham, Prateek Vats aur khud Dibakar’s desperate pleas to an audience that is experiencing their lives almost exclusively through their mobile phone screens. They aren’t here to preach; they aren’t here to give you a solution or even nudge toward a better way forward. The film’s attempt is to give you a 3rd person’s view on how our continued addiction to screens, obsessive scrolling, and lack of judgement due to reduced attention spa….
*looks blankly into the distance*
….reduced action spans, are turning us all into folks who live dual lives. One where exuberant emotion is on display at all times, to make up for which, we’re numbing ourselves to reality, increasingly only wanting to only live in the former world where we’re all stars, all important, and entitled to good things.
However, LSD 2 doesn’t entirely look DOWN upon Internet culture, completely negating its virtues. The antagonist here is the powerful might of the digital world that turns us into our most powerful selves too. In the first story, titled L for Like, a trans woman, played by cisgender man Paritosh Tiwari, is introduced to us as a participant in the hilarious titled reality tv show, Truth ya Naach. Leaning into that dual life I was just talking about, ki ya toh sach bolo, yaa duniya ek liye nacho. Paritosh is Noor, who has managed to make her way to the top of the show, and for her to continue staying on tope, she’s got to be constantly visible, doing provocative things. The show is Big Boss, America’s next top model, Jhalak Dikhla Jaa, all rolled into one, a pot-shot at how emotions are manufactured amongst the gullible through this medium. So, while Noor maybe using her estranged mother to gain sympathy points on TV, the fact that a trans woman has that visibility, is able to dance and live as she wants, earn money and fame, is possible because we live in a digital age, where there IS more room for Noor. She is allowed to collect these ‘Likes’, because millions are watching on their phones.
But almost as if Dibakar doesn’t want to allow you to feel too comforted by the wholesome-ness of Noor’s win and the hilarity of her conservative, tightly-wound mother singing a song that goes “main ganda, tu gandi” with exaggerated long notes, we abruptly cut to the second story titled S for Share, where we meet Bonita Rajpurohit playing Kulu. A transwoman who works with an organization that hires transwomen to help run a local train system. Kulu is empowered, and seemingly doing great under the leadership of a woman dedicated to the cause, played by Swastika Mukherjee. Kulu also runs a small YouTube channel with her boyfriend as a hobby. But despite the increased acceptance of trans people, jaise part 1 mein dikhaya, Kulu ki life is far from ideal. It’s kind of a poetic irony, perhaps by design, ki the story where a cis man plays a trans character, he gets the character with the happy life on an upward trajectory, but when its Bonita, you get to peels the curtain back and bit and see how far from truth that life still is for trans people in India and the world. When a cop, talks to the media about handling a case of sexual assault where the victim is Kulu, he keeps forgetting her name, at one point calling her ‘Manali’. So, while laws exist to protect the trans community, are the upholders taking them seriously?
This film has so.many.questions.
Itni pechida commentary ki ummeed nahi thi mujhe film se, kyunki embarrassingly hindi cinema se iski apeksha karne ki aadat chhoot gayi hai for the most part. But when I tell you every single narrative, whether a character appears on screen for 4 minutes of 40, is deeply observed, thought out, and designed, it is true. Its wildly satisfying to see a filmmaker FINALLY present commentary on the intermixing and co-dependence of our lives on social media, and now increasingly AI.
Third portion taka aate aate, (and from what I understand according to the time stamps on the screen in various shots, the timeline is reversed) from like to Share now we move back in time, but only by a few weeks to D joh yahaan hai Download. The protagonist is an 18-year-old gaming streamer who goes by ‘Game Paapi’. Abhinav Singh is so very good at exploring this very specific creature that has never existed before. Over the last few years movies and shows have taken shots at “influencers”, most of which are steeped in sexism, ridiculing women has always been easy. I don’t recall anyone ever looking into YouTube, despite the medium pre-dating Instagram by many years as a video platform. So many channels, especially in India showcase young men live streaming video games, while using the choicest of bad words, riling their audience up in a frenzy, insulting not just the viewers’ intelligence, but being homophobic, sexist, casteist all at once. Ugh this topic is so close to my heart, the Download part of the film downloaded itself under my skin. Why young men chose to become these “creepy creators”. Agar Game Paapi ke ghar mein kitchen is falling up, but his YouTube earnings have allowed him to decorate if with a brand new AC for his mother, something that’s beyond the means of his tuition teaching father, is Game Paapi at fault for wanting more money, or is his audience, who is subscribing in the millions to be held responsible for demand he pander to their needs?
Despite ALL of this, and dear lord there is SO MUCH MORE going on in this film, I haven’t even touched upon (that score by Sneha Khanwalkar!!), the screenplay is held together MIRACULOUSLY well by editor Paramita Ghosh. Such a treat to have Arti Bajaj’s Chamkila last week and Paramita’s LSD this week. By Chamkila standards, LSD 2 is positively MANIC though. DOP Riju Das and Anand Bansal leave no shooting style unused, the peppy dance number might be the simplest part of this film from a visual POV. The film threatens to flail, without restraint almost after each sequence, held firmly together by Paramita, while allowing it not to compromise on the unfettered leaps it wants to take. If a film wants to jump back and forth from a frenzied maniacal news anchor studio to a world of AI, drenched in equal parts pure calmness and equal parts pure capitalism, there better be a SKILLED editor on board.
LSD 2 is wild, and then some. Allow yourself to be impressed by how closely Dibakar Banerjee and his writers observe the internet, and how deeply they understand the culture. It’s like the dangers the Matrix movies warned us about have taken on a lighter, fluffier, more colorful texture, but remain dangerous just the same. It’s a miracle this story has whatever funding it does, and a studio like Balaji has dared to put it in movie theatres. Ek baar jaakar dekh kar aao, phir I think baith kar baatein karte hain aur detail mein. I think imma watch it again, to fully grasp it.
