Rahul Desai
A Chaotic, unforgiving satire on the Indian internet. Director Dibakar Banerjee teams up with the writers of Eeb Allay Ooo! for a series of shrewd but uneven vignettes.
Technology was the storyteller of Love Sex Aur Dhokha (2010) but technology is the story of Love Sex Aur Dhokha 2 (LSD 2). The film knows it isn’t as cutting-edge as its predecessor. To its credit, it doesn’t aim for the easy shock value of digital peepholes and spycams.
Banerjee’s unforgiving satire on the Indian internet age. It is no longer the hardware – the eyes or ears – of a film; it is the virus-riddled software. It is no longer a film-making experiment; it is the very state of being.
This spiritual sequel presents three snapshots of the social media generation. The mutation begins with the title itself; the “Love,” “Sex” and “Dhokha” segments morph into “Like,” “Share” and “Download”.
Watching LSD 2 is a strange experience. Allusions to the hallucinatory drug aside, it’s like attending the class of a colourful and snarky professor without fully grasping his words. It’s playful to a fault, but it also treads the shaky line between bitter and indulgent.
In the end, the message is as funny as it is depressing. New-age technology makes it impossible to tell progression from regression, or artificial intelligence from natural intellect. The social divides were only deepened by the cameras in Love Sex Aur Dhokha.