Review: 'Not A Love Story' will give you motion sickness

Watching a really terrible Ram Gopal Varma film isn’t anything out of the ordinary anymore. The filmmaker, considered to be one of India’s finest till a few years ago, has lately been a pale shadow of the auteur who wowed us with films like Shiva, Satya, Company, or even Sarkar. But this is old news now. Ram Gopal Varma Ki Aag was only the tip of the iceberg. There’s a lot many headache-inducing B movies to come from the house of RGV, it seems.

 

Not A Love Story, to put it simply, is difficult to sit through. If the mind-numbing background score -- a staple in RGV films -- wasn’t enough to leave you feeling ill, the constantly moving camera is RGV’s new lethal weapon. No, this is not the same as the below-the-table or you-can-look-inside-the-actor’s-nose camera angle. This is a hand-held camera zooming in and out of the character’s face, bosom, thighs and butt, which is sure to give you motion sickness. The repetitive use of the title song from Rangeela (among the director’s most loved films) -- as a phone ringtone -- grates on your nerves after a point.

 

Most bad films suffer on account of bad stories. An RGV film is awful due to the way he makes it. The Neeraj Grover murder case is explosive material for a feature film. In an industry where well-made docu-dramas are rare, you would think Ramu’s penchant for realism would bring to life a story everyone read in the papers and were affected by. There are elements of violence, romance and horror involved -- the setting is interesting. But then, RGV won’t make it easy for us, will he?

 

The film had massive potential. To begin with, the casting is spot-on. Mahie Gill is convincing as struggling actor Anushka Chawla waiting to land her first film role, and there couldn’t have been a better actor than Deepak Dobriyal to play her possessive lover, Robin. NALS’s best moments lie post-interval, when the police start looking for corporate head Ashish Bhatnagar (Gehi), who has gone missing. The interrogation scenes and Anushka’s eventual breakdown are among the film’s finer moments. But the rest is traumatic.

 

When Not A Love Story started, it seemed like it was a bad film so enjoyable that it could be recommended. But soon, you realise that this kind of skullduggery wouldn’t be advisable for anyone. As the low-held Canon 5D follows Mahie Gill’s bosom, or is placed strategically below her legs, you are sickened by the desperate attempt at titillation.

Kanti Shah’s B films -- the Gunda variety -- have more class than Not A Love Story. At least, none of them pretends to be a realist social drama inspired by a crime that can shake you up. This is plain mockery.

 

The worst thing for me, though, is that Not A Love Story ruined even the memory of Rangeela, among the few RGV films I could still cherish. Gah.