A sly, throwaway shot: While the court proceedings are hotting up, the judge snatches a moment to use his eye drops. And there are more such close-to-life vignettes, like the aged mother who’s unsure about touching the mangled remains of her son. Or the wanna-glow heroine ambling through the streets, her state of mind as restless as the horde of fluttering pigeons. You’re hooked.

In fact, Ram Gopal Varma’s Not a Love Story — blatantly adapted from the 2008 sensational and still-clouded case of Maria Susairaj-Emile Jerome Mathew-Neeraj Grover — sees the director return to form. He’s bold, brazen and offers his take on what may have happened one afternoon in a dingy high-rise of Mumbai’s Lokhandwala complex. This is the Garden of Struggle, where aspiring actors from all over the country hope to become the next big bazookas in Bollywood. Ouch, the casting couch, has to be dealt with, of course. And assorted humiliation.
Indeed, RGV strikes a cautionary note without being moralistic or judgmental. To each to his or her own darkening dreams. Throughout, the camera is ultra-busy, somersaulting, going mad 360 degrees and retreating into corners. It’s a plot that requires frenzied narration, any stasis would have indicated a lack of energy and woolly thinking.
The best aspect about this crime thriller is that it has been filmed on digital HD camera, allowing speed and immediacy, as if it were a news report without any punctuation marks. Devoid of a formal cinematographer, the project is served ably by a team of camera brats shooting from various angles simultaneously. The editing — albeit indulgent at times with the topsy turvy angles — is mostly zingy. For the future of Bollywood cinema — hopelessly mired in extravagant budgets and wastage — the cost-slashing digital format is god-sent. Way to shoot!
Evidently impatient with protracted dramaturgy, RGV cuts to the chase right off with a brief conversation between out-of-towners Anu (Mahi Gill) and Robin (Deepak Dobriyal). She wants to do one of those luck-by-chance turns in B’wood, her boyfriend isn’t happy about that, but knows it’s no point stopping her. Next, Anu’s become a typical Lokhandwalli, exhausting herself out at auditions and fobbing off advances of wolves in producers’ clothing. Aha, it’s just another day in Cinema Paradiso.
That big break appears to be imminent, thanks to Ashish, a film corporate executive (Ajay Gehi). He has his own dilemmas to deal vis-a-vis a broken relationship. A vodka-soaked, heartache-sharing night follows. The executive crashes at Anu’s apartment. Fatefully, on a whim, Robin arrives by a morning flight, is outraged by the executive sprawled on the living room mattress and goes ballistic.
The rest you don’t have to be told, except that from this juncture, RGV goes at the aftermath, hammers and tongs. Gore, shock tactics and heat-of-the-moment sexuality are intrinsic to the film’s content. Truly, if even wilder stuff from David Lynch and Quentin Tarantino is okay, why should RGV hem and haw? Moreover, he always pulls the viewer back, when that shudder runs through the spine. Example: the cut away from the chopper just when the foul deed is about to be committed. The faint-heard have to be absolutely warned: the show of rage isn’t likely to be everyone’s cup of Earl Grey.
In the awww-come-on department, the wannabe heroine is compelled to cry far too excessively till it becomes as tiresome as her cellphone’s clanging ring tone. Wail, wail, wail. And trust RGV to cut away from the line of dialogue, “You are very talented” to the heroine’s exaggerated pair of breasts. Plus, why plant a weirdo neighbour whose presence is as baffling as the strange old lady’s, immovable from her seat in Dhobi Ghat?
On the upside, the characterisations of the investigating police officer (Zakir Hussain, excellent), Anu’s friends craving to enter Bollywood, an easygoing glam photographer (Neel Bhoopalam, likeable), and a producer-type who relishes clubbing, all ring true.
Expectedly, RGV’s background score is mood enhancing, extracted from Sandeep Chowtha. The remix of the Rangeela re is, particularly, well used at a point to poignant effect. Believe it or not, the usually hard-crust director reveals an emotional side during the Rangeela passage, an emotion perhaps to Urmila Matondkar, his best muse yet.
Technically audacious, the enterprise can also boast of Deepak Dobriyal’s controlled, yet hard-hitting performance as the crazed killer. Mahi Gill is serviceable, not great, not disastrous. She does connect to the viewer by playing her part as if she was alternately starry-eyed or in a stupor.
Inevitably, the take on the true-life murder case leaves the doors wide open to controversy. How can a director say this could be the truth? But then it’s evident that RGV does not pretend, in any which way, to advance his take as “nothing but the truth”. Come to think of it, Not a Love Story could have well been titled “Not the Absolute Truth”. Because the outcome is bold, but like life, not always beautiful.
Those who care for gutsy cinema should sprint towards it.