A Reflection of Our Digital Selves
Love Sex Aur Dhokha 2 came with a bold promise when it released in April 2024. It would show us not just love, sex or betrayal, but the version of us that we live with through the phone — the one that poses for the picture, shelves the emotions, and performs for the audiences we can’t see.
Interviews with director Dibakar Banerjee, who returned to the territory first explored in Love Sex Aur Dhokha (2010), make the case that this sequel was not about repeating the old shocks but about finding new ones. Our relationship with technology had moved in strange new ways in the years between the two films. Cameras are no longer concealed and in the contemporary world, algorithms are not just passive observers; they actively engage, entice, and, at times, dictate the terms of our existence.
Here, LSD 2 is less a sequel and more a social commentary of the constructed realities people make, a continuation of the idea that the camera doesn’t just capture reality, it creates it. It is the first work to show that people are fundamentally hollow and the love they seek is the most distorted reality of all.
Three Stories, One Pulse
The film is separated into three segments: Like, Share, and Download. Each segment addresses different aspects of the multiple lives we lead before others. Despite this, they are all unified by the same emotion: the isolation that comes with being perpetually visible.
In Like, we are introduced to Noor, a trans woman participating in a cutting-edge reality TV competition titled, Truth Ya Naach. Noor’s reality is the emotional core of this segment. Confronting a mother who refuses to accept her trans identity, Noor’s starring performance in the show and emotional plea to her mother to see her as she is, culminate in the performance climax in which she joyfully dances for her. Noor’s pain and her mother’s ignorance are at the center of the spectacle as she dances for the audience.
The second part, Share, features Kulu, portrayed by Bonita Rajpurohit. Kulu, also transgender, operates in a realm that is a far cry from glitzy studio lights. She operates within the confines of small victories — running her own online channel, collaborating with NGOs, and working toward her unrecognized rights. Her story is more about survival than spectacle, and through her, the film suggests that, with respect to performance entities, acceptance may stand as a form of spectacle — something people show while the cameras are on, leaving private acceptance off the performance backdrop.
In Download, Game Paapi, played by Abhinav Singh, is yet another performer of a new generation, the online gamer and content creator. He operates within a realm determined by views and followers. Fame, which was a distant unattainable dream, gradually transforms into an obsession. In the midst of an unfolding scandal, the audience that celebrated him, by and large, becomes his adversary, thereby portraying the reality of digital applause as superficial and temporary.
Throughout all three narratives, the repetitive theme presented by Banerjee remains a deeply unsettling question — in a world that is entirely public, what is left private?
The Lives Behind the Lives They Portray
The unusual emotional depth in LSD 2 can, in part, be attributed to the closely paralleled journeys of the characters and the journeys of the actors.
Bonita Rajpurohit: From Margins to the Mainstream
Bonita Rajpurohit is now part of history. Playing Kulu, she became the first-ever transgender woman to assume a leading role in a mainstream Hindi film. Reknowned filmmaker Prakash Jha is now associated with Bonita, and she was working with smaller production houses and struggling to get by just before Bonita Rajpurohit: From Margins to the Mainstream. Bonita was born in Rajasthan, and her work history is not easy. Bonita was born in Rajasthan, her struggle is a mirror to her character Kulu, a woman fighting to define herself in a world that wants to shove her into a narrow box.
Bonita has given several interviews in which she states her wanted to represent the trans woman, not through the angle of tragedy, suffering, and sorrow, but through strength. This powerful belief permeates every frame she is in. When she is subjected to casual cruelty and mockery, you understand that for Bonita, it is not just acting, but the painful articulation of a deep, personal experience, pride, frustration, and relentless resilience.
Paritosh Tiwari: A Newcomer’s Vulnerable Leap
When Tiwari plays Noor the transitioning contestant of the reality show, he steps into a role that requires him to grapple with a complex emotional landscape. Paritosh is new to the film industry, but he has approached the role with the needed empathy and caution to avoid a caricature.
To prepare for devoted to Noor, Paritosh learned body language and dance. After all, one needs to understand how gender orientation impacts movement and energy. The vulnerability he brings — the quiet heartbreak beneath the glamour — feels real because like Noor, he was also navigating his first encounter with being exposed to national attention. The similarity between an actor trying to find his place and a contestant trying to win acceptance is both powerful and, striking.
Abhinav Singh — Living the Online Persona
A portrayal of an internet troll and his unadhdored “Parody” of internet was a bias of Abhinav Sigh’s “Game Paapi” i contrast to being a generation content-creator. As Abhinav himself is part of a generation of India content creators, and thus, the implications of constantly performing for an audience, the scene, particularly the one where he undergoes a emotional breakdown after a he faces a controversial viral backlash is remarkably powerful.
For Abhinav, who received his first Filmfare nomination for this role, LSD 2 served both as a debut and a mirror to his own relationship with fame. The dual nature of celebrity is consistently an unmined portion of content across the society.
Beyond the Screen: What the Film Says About Us
At a first glance, Love Sex Aur Dhokha 2 deals with issues of identity and technology but, at the core, it is a film about intimacy. It chronicles the ways in which the digital world alters how we love, betray, forgive, and regard ourselves.
For the Indian context, where the intersection of gender identity and digital discourse is still a work in progress, this film is rather timely. Bonita alone signals something different — not simply the value of representation, but the necessity of empathy. The audience saw in Bonita’s performance the redemptive power of authenticity.
The film also portrays how, for many young people, the experience of growing up includes the burden of dual realities. For them, heartbreak is no longer a private experience — it is public and trending. A banal argument or a confession is pure content. Banerjee captures that tragedy — we have become our own paparazzi.
Critics have been divided — some praise the film’s ambition while the others call it overly experimental. Audiences seem to have understood and appreciated the film’s willingness to hold a mirror up, even if it was not a massive commercial success. It sparked the conversations that needed to be had.
Behind the Lens and Between the Lines
Even at the filmmaking stage, LSD 2 was as bold as its content. Banerjee co-wrote the screenplay with Prateek Vats and Shubham, who built a world that seemed unscripted but was documentary-style and rigorously structured.
The workshops for the cast were not the conventional rehearsals. They did not mechanically read the lines but rather engaged in a dialogue about the characters by internalizing the motivations of shame, ambition, and loneliness that operate in the public gaze. Bonita mentions that Dibakar encouraged her not to “act” but to “be,” which captures the raw authenticity of the film.
Paritosh Tiwari, for his part, spent weeks refining posture and movement to express Noor’s changing identity. To tell the story, he opted for the unsettling silence that accompanies live performances and phone notifications rather than sentimental music, sounds that characterize our distracted age.
It is interesting that Banerjee himself does not use social media. This detachment may be what gives the film its clarity: he is watching the circus from outside the tent.
Love Sex Aur Dhokha 2 may not provide straightforward conclusions, but, in the best way possible, it unsettles its audience, making them wonder — with the world watching, whom are you putting on an act for?
The film’s thematic and casting choices for the film are its unique attributes. The first Hindi film to feature a trans woman, and for casting her not in a superficial way, but giving her an the role that forms the emotional crux of the film, is, in itself, a quiet revolution.
Amid a world filled with filters and façades, Banerjee’s film and its cast work towards the steady reminder that truth — even the most raw and unedited truth — is powerful. The faces may be captured on display and smartphone cameras, but the sentiment is deeply and inescapably felt.
And for this reason, the film is a confession — our confession. Love Sex Aur Dhokha 2 is not simply a sequel.