Here’s why you’ve got to watch the most talked about movie at this time Love Sonia

The allure and magnetic pull of sex- it can make lives and at the same time, destroy them too. Like the many countless lives, it already has destroyed. The problem isn’t in sex. Rather when one’s forced to become an object- against one’s wishes, against one’s nature. Globally, where current figures stand- prostitution generates around $73 billion dollars for China*, $14.6 billion for the United States*, $8.4 billion in India*, and around $24 billion* for Japan.

Progressive lives, capable minds and, intelligent, very enterprising beings that could’ve been successful, well-achieving girls and women are moulded into being commodities for philandering, aimless lives that revel in the others’ exploitation.

So when one touched upon such a sensitive, yet, such an inexplicably complex web that surrounds human beings- throws in a harrowingly arresting narrative- it’s bound to get the talk going. That’s precisely what film-maker Tabrez Noorani attached with noted names such as Eat Pray Love, Bhopal Express has attempted with Love Sonia, perhaps the most important film all year, thus far, in 2018.

Caught in a vicious entanglement of a global sex racket, Love Sonia spans different lives, different characters and brings to life the trials, tribulations and, above all- the existential crisis of Sonia (Mrunal Thakur) and the lives connected with her. A number of moving characters that have apparently put together some jaw-dropping albeit thought-provoking performances are actors of versatile verve- Anupam Kher, Richa Chadhdha, Freida Pinto and, Demi Moore.

So when you come across a subject as intense and ‘real’ as this, you approach the film differently. You know you’re not up for the usual flimsy, girl-boy around the trees, upset parents at home, boozy friends singing uncatchy tunes half-baked in lusty swimming pools- kind of stuff. You know, in essence, that this is cinema as opposed to a flick. Popcorn may not fly like John Wicks’ bullets here. Nor will your hands mistakenly go for the dim sum sauce, engrossed in gory blood, the kinds you see in a Hostel or a Jurassic Park-outlet.

So impressive and passionate has been the commitment of Tabrez Noorani in making Love Soniya that not only did it take him a span of 10 years to complete the project, rather he was in such paucity of time that owing to previous commitments, he’d work parallel on a slew of international projects whilst making Love Soniya. He was, as media describes it aptly, leading a double life. And if you were to discover all that the true force of the film as up to during the many nights he spent in Mumbai, you’d be simply lost for words.

On most days, whilst Love Sonia was being conceived and made, Tabrez Noorani would conduct a raid on several brothels during night time. His agenda? Trying to rescue many girls who had been forced into prostitution. He’d often pose himself as a film unit person engaged in the task of location-scouting when in reality, he was simply being a good Samaritan. Isn’t that inspiring already?

It seems, a lot of intensity and power of emotion has gone into making Love Sonia, a film that’s about to get released, at a later date in 2018. The film traces the story of Sonia who comes to the city of dreams Mumbai to locate her sister, who’s been sold to a brothel by her own father, as a result of a debt he owed to the “hawks”. How, in the process of locating her sister, Sonia herself is forced into prostitution and is raped, beaten, molested forms the plank of this very non-Bollywoodian narrative.

The film travels from India to Hong Kong, and finally to Los Angeles, travelling alongside the central figure of the movie; the soul of an immersive narrative- Sonia. Why this is among the significant and hugely valuable films of its time is since a lot of what the viewer is slated to find on the big screen is, in fact, a slice of reality. A film embedded in the uncomfortable current accompanying today forms the bedrock of the narrative. Crucial to any movie, of course, is the central idea.

Noorani was struck by the ide when a friend of his in Los Angeles, who works as an aid worker asked him to accompany him to a police station, where a young girl found on the streets had been taken to the police and was being enquired about. A twinge of on-screen fiction was immersed in the real nature of events. He would meet up again with women he helped rescue a few years later had after they had been housed in shelters and had been rehabilitated. In his own words, “That’s when a lot of the stories came out. I would share bits of the script with them and they would read it, and they would say ‘yes’, ‘no’, they’d laugh, cry. A lot of that happened during this process.”

Whenever girls are picked, kidnapped or simply go ‘missing’, it’s like a star in the galaxy above our heads, begins to lose its twinkle. The waif-like vulnerability about the youngsters; the ‘promising have-been’ translates into being a listless, tiny, crumbling bug-like existence. For the boots around them, they are to be stepped over. Aren’t they?

Movies like Love Sonia do not attempt to simply collect praises because of their character-driven storyline. Rather, they seek to use a creative filter called movie-making to depict a multitude of emotions that lives full of loss and remorse could not have possibly emoted. They eschew the boundaries between the real and the fictional using a purpose. Does that compel you to be curious about the movie? If it doesn’t stick around your head from your personal automobile or that Ola or whatever it is you use and try and stare beyond the glib and gloss that crying eyes hide in areas your mother would warn you about or to keep off from. You’ll find a Sonia there; you’ll find hundreds of Soniya’s there that could’ve been inside a corporate chamber, a Starbucks and, heck- even a bowling alley, just chilling with friends, Instagramming like everyone!