Sneha Jaiswal (Twitter | Instagram)
When “LSD: Love, Sex Aur Dhokha” came out in 2010, it was as unique to Bollywood’s drama genre as “The Blair Witch Project” or “Paranormal Activity” was to the realm of horror movies. However, director Dibakar Banerjee’s 2024 sequel, “LSD 2: Love, Sex Aur Dhokha 2,” is a chaotic follow-up in the LSD filmverse, which packs the screen with so many details that my brain hurt within the first fifteen minutes. If you’re a fan of reality television shows, particularly “Bigg Boss,” you might find the film far more entertaining than I did. Despite Dibakar seemingly wanting to satirize and give a giant middle finger to reality shows, social media, and influencer culture, the plot in the first half unfolds more like a salute to them, with the satirical elements feeling more real (and annoying) than comedic, acerbic, or witty.
Just like the first “Love, Sex Aur Dhokha,” LSD 2 is an anthology of three stories written by Dibakar Banerjee, Shubham, and Prateek Vats. The first two stories focus on transgender characters. In some sense, the screenplay of the first story is actually pretty brilliant. It follows Noor (Paritosh Tiwari), a transgender woman participating in a reality show called “Truth ya Naach” (Truth or Dance), which is a mashup of popular TV shows “Nach Baliye” and “Bigg Boss.” Dibakar Banerjee gets the settings and reality TV interactions spot on! But it made me feel like, “Hey, if I wanted to watch cat-fights on Bigg Boss, I would just watch Bigg Boss. I don’t need a movie about it.” (Useless fact: I do not watch Bigg Boss.)
Paritosh Tiwari is excellent in his portrayal of Noor, who is hungry for attention and validation and would do anything to win the reality show. Swaroopa Ghosh plays Noor’s mother, who doesn’t completely accept her male-to-female transition, but comes on the reality show in an effort to help Noor’s ratings. What’s more spicier for TRPs than some live mother-daughter drama? However, Noor’s story ends abruptly before the focus shifts to the next protagonist, leaving you just wondering, “WTF?” It wasn’t even very interesting to begin with, and it doesn’t even get a coherent end? Okay, thank you, not.
The second story begins with a grisly, graphic scene of a victim of sexual violence, who is found in the bushes by cops. Soon, we learn about the fate of Kullu (Bonita Rajpurohit), a transwoman who is a metro employee. The storytelling is fragmented between Kullu’s life and her boss’s (Swastika Mukherjee) activities. Her boss attempts to help Kullu, but as more facts emerge in the sexual assault case, she is forced to rethink her actions. While this was an interesting attempt at perhaps highlighting how a ‘savior complex’ can go awfully wrong, the plot was neither entertaining nor did it pack a punch. The ‘found-footage’ style screenplay only makes it worse, because it didn’t warrant that style and could’ve been shot in a straightforward manner. The background music does little to help make things more interesting, and I kept reminiscing about the first “Love, Sex aur Dhoka” title track, a super catchy song sung by Kailash Kher.
By the time the third story rolled in, I lost complete interest in watching “LSD 2: Love, Sex Aur Dhokha 2,” but still pushed on to see where things would go. The third one is a cynical look at Gen Z kids who spend most of their lives live-streaming, with their eyes glued to screens. It also takes a dig at the metaverse, ending the tale in a weird, cringe-worthy virtual reality sequence, with the protagonist finding a final escape in the virtual world from life’s chaos. Even though the stories do have some interesting themes, their execution culminated in an exhausting viewer experience for me. Watch it if you enjoy unhinged reality shows and screens packed with a whole lot of information overload.
You can stream the film on Netflix.
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