Loev (2020)
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Loev Movie Review
Loev is a 2015 Indian romantic drama film directed by Sudhanshu Saria and starring Dhruv Ganesh and Shiv Panditt. It’s a complicated, but definitely fascinating movie.
It follows two friends who set off to the Western Ghats for a weekend trip and focuses on their complex emotional and sexual relationship. The movie is all about this very complex dynamic between these two psychologically tortured men and there is a lot to talk about here, but let’s first state the elephant in the room – the controversial rape scene.
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Yes, it is rape, but it’s not as terrible as many have said it is because at the end of the day Sahil was really unfair to Jai. In fact, he was so damn annoying that he infuriated me more often than he endeared me. You see, he is the type of person who isn’t childlike and sweet, but rather childish and annoying in his provocateur behavior. I realize that the movie’s problem isn’t supposed to be the likability of its characters, but he was frustrating way too often, thus I did not feel bad about what happened to him as he almost deserved it.
Through Jai, the film explores the clash between these two very different people not just in personality, but also in lifestyle and class. Everybody pinpoints the rape scene, but they all forget to talk about Sahil using Jai financially and playing mind games with him romantically and sexually. There is a lot to be said about the morality of the movie, but this is how some gay relationships work, so to me it’s a very positive thing to have this highly complicated relationship at the center of what is a romance movie, and thus it provokes discussion.
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Alex is the most unlikable character of the bunch, there is no doubt about it, but the central conflict between him and Sahil was memorable and amusing while the crazy double date at the end was very realistic in the depiction of sexual tensions and fraught relationships. Still, for the most part the movie focuses only on the two main players, which was a great choice as it led to terrific character development for both of them. The acting is fantastic all-around and it’s such a tragedy that Ganesh died when he was so young and talented.
Loev has excellent music, but it needed better editing as some cuts here and there were overly quick and even rough, but the cinematography is stunning as it perfectly captures its mountains region with that scene in the rocks being gorgeous. I am a hiker myself, so seeing that sequence made me instantly wish I were there with them on those rocks.
The build-up is incredible – the meeting up on the station, the arriving on the mountain, the hiking… It all seemed natural and very intriguing and highly cinematic. Sudhanshu Saria obviously wanted to make an homage to those classic 40s and 50s romance films that are poetic and melancholic in their feel, but with gay people, and he did just that, but admittedly the final scenes were typical and this time around I would have preferred a happier ending.
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