At times life of a film journalist can get far from rosy, especially when you have to rush all bleary-eyed for the first day first show of a film like Love Games . That too in a week in which you have already seen The Blueberry Hunt .
‘Lust Games’ would perhaps have been a better title for the film as it kicked off with the rich widow Ramona (Patralekha, the innocent belle of Citylights getting over-sexed and over-the-top with histrionics here) going in for a no-strings-attached fling with a phobic businessman Sameer (Gaurav Arora, a colourless and characterless hunk) who is into SH (self harm). Ok, we didn’t invent the term, the film did. Then the two decide to go hunting for couples to hook up with and swap partners to make things more exciting for themselves. So far so bold.
“Roses are red, violets are blue, sex can be dangerous, but love can be too,” goes a ditty in the film. So love soon steps in, in the form of Alisha (Tara Alisha Berry, ho-hum). Sameer falls head over heels for the lady, who is herself much harassed by her hubby, and, then on, the film becomes a familiar jealousy and revenge triangle. Boringly so, despite the background score at one point pumping it up with “exciting exciting”.
Meanwhile, to blunt the deviant edges of the characters the filmmaker gives a sympathetic context to the perversities of Ramona and Sameer instead of letting them remain pure, unadulterated warped people. Bad childhood you see. There has to be a reason for every transgression.
Love Games is a C Grade film trying hard to be cool (pitches itself as urban-thriller) making it worse for itself. If the whole point of giving us a truly adult film was to tom-tom sexually expletive terms well, then what more can one say? A non-existent story is compensated for, expectedly, by many tight lip-locks and bodies between the sheets. Not to forget some laughable dialogue with the most inane use of English. One character quoting “Hell hath no fury” has another say “Please, I don’t like Shakespeare type of English.” Love Games is far from shocking as it had promised to be, it is plain irritating. A movie in which sleaze turns utterly infantile.
Love Games
Director: Vikram Bhatt
Starring: Patralekha, Tara Alisha Berry, Gaurav Arora
Runtime: 114 mins
