'Luv Ka The End' (Hindi, Romantic Comedy)
Director: Bumpy
Cast: Shraddha Kapoor, Taaha Shah, Shenaz Treasurywalla, Roye Seagal, Nikhil Vyas
The guitar-wielding protagonist of Y films’ introductory animation dispels any doubts on the demographic that Yashraj’s new venture intends to cater to. The film company that, ostensibly, defined the upper middle class romantic dreams of the nineties seems intent on making its impact on the playstation generation.
In this context, the linguistic concoction that is the title of Y films’ maiden attempt seems a trifle out of place. I understand the intended wordplay, but the odd phrasing seems unbecoming of the South Bombay teens it is centered on. To please its target audience, the film draws liberally from an eighties icon, that progenitor of American teenage dramas, John Hughes.
The stratified realities of high school, a gaggle of girlfriends, sagacious siblings and tongue-tied tech geeks are a simple evolutionary step away from the elaborate universe that Hughes constructed nearly two decades ago. The completely clueless parents of the protagonist are a metaphor for the everyday grind with which this universe maintains, at best, a tenuous connection.
The teenagers’ lives happen right under the noses of blissfully unaware parents creating a conflict that is almost always sure to be resolved in an amicable manner.
Rhea (Shraddha Kapoor playing our very own Molly Ringwald) is hopelessly infatuated with the resident stud of her junior college, the titular Luv, played by Taaha Shah. Jugs and Sonia, Rhea’s best friends, are stand-ins for the ‘always in argument’ devil and angel over Rhea’s shoulder.
Almost never in agreement, be it on Rhea’s romance or acceptable body fat levels, these two friends are the protagonist’s support system in the Hughesian universe. Much like Samantha Baker’s sixteenth birthday, Rhea’s eighteenth birthday seems doomed to boredom when her parents are called away on to Pune on its eve.
Instead of ringing in adulthood at a classmate’s party, with a performance by her favorite rock star to boot, she seems set to languish at home: watching over a foul mouthed grandmother and an utterly precocious younger sister Minty (Jannat Zubair Rahmani in an immensely likeable turn).
If ‘Luv ka the End’ borrows foundations from John Hughes, its superstructure is modeled after another 2006 teenage drama, ‘John Tucker Must Die’. Unlike in John Hughes’ Samantha Baker, not only is Luv aware of Rhea’s existence it seems he reciprocates her affections. His cloying manner, however, forebodes the deception that lies in store. A boy this slick is almost definitely too slippery to be a one-woman man and he is, but under far more insidious circumstances.
When the token south Indian school nerd informs Rhea and friends of Luv’s duplicitous escapades, she first reaches a few logically inconsistent conclusions. But the spirit of friendship and female empowerment prove a potent combination. Rhea decides, with a little help from friends, to mollify her emotional exploitation by cutting her erstwhile boyfriend down to size.
And, like Ferris Bueller, she needs to do it before her parents return. As the caper that is ‘Luv ka the End’ unfolds, one cannot but muse over the preoccupations and pressures of the urban teen, at least as they are depicted in Indian Cinema. Gone are the furtive glances and the rush of perceived acceptance.
The song ‘Tonight’ that starts out in a disconcertingly infantilised tone only to merge with a chorus of booming gusto, is in some ways a metaphor for the child woman that is singing it. She isn’t singing with the joy of a hidden crush but in anticipation of losing her virginity. Somewhere in the last decade the dilemmas confronting teenagers in our cinema seem to have graduated and so have the ways in which they negotiate them. One just wishes, however, that the niggling feeling of watching a transplanted reality didn’t impair our viewing experience.