Hate Story

2012
Written by Vikram Bhatt and Rohit Malhotra (dialogue)
Directed by Vivek Agnihotri

India serves up an erotic thriller that manages to not be much of either. But don’t fret, Hate Story has plenty of bad acting and spite against women to make up for it! The best part of the anti-woman themes is how much of it just seems automatic, as if director Vivek Agnihotri had bad things happen on autopilot. Characters are simply stereotypes, traced from the numerous late night cable thrillers Hate Story liberally cribs from. The only interesting aspect is the class warfare angle, as those with money are presented as corrupt and moral-less monsters. So, you know, pretty accurate. It’s that film where I agree with half of what it is saying, and am opposed to the other half. Total complication! ::shakes fist::

There has been the increasing trend in US politics to divide everyone into two camps, liberal or conservative, blue or red, Democrat or Republican. It stems from the two major US political parties, and a lot of issues involving teams and groups that would take thousands of words to explain. But basically, dividing issues sometimes demands a black and white look at issues. Hate Story is complicated, and smears the black and white into an ugly shade of grey. Don’t expect housewives to eagerly embrace this shade, what with the terrible views on women. Just because something is good in one aspect, but bad in another, doesn’t mean we should immediately disavow it. But you need to look at which points will have the most impact, and make your decisions based on your priorities. The problems in Hate Story destroy what would have been a cool film about socialism taking down corrupt capitalists, and flies in the face of the “treat everyone equally” aspect by making the women the punching bags. That’s not the kind of the world I want to endorse, so it’s time to tell the message of Hate Story, that the woman was ruined because she had “sex” and is now “barren”, to go fuck itself.

Hate Story is a flashy mainstream film, and makes no bones about being more pretty images than actual depth. And if Hate Story is honest about anything, it’s honest in the areas that aren’t flashy. The lines the prostitute says to Kavyah about how Kavyah is educated, so she must have already had sex, tells more about views on sexuality in India than all the sensual dance and seduction sequences throughout the film. Despite the not very explicit (by US standards) scenes here, actress Paoli Dam previously caused a stir due to a very explicit sex scene in Chatrak (which was deleted from the Indian version of the film, but has been leaked online and proved rather popular). Dam herself has spoken about how her passion for cinema gives her the strength to do scenes most Indian actresses wouldn’t dare. Her bravery is the kind of thing that should be breaking down walls, walls built up by some of the themes in Hate Story.

One thing Hate Story excels at is terrible actors. Beyond Gulshan Devaiya hamming it up every time he talks, some of the minor characters are just awful. A security guy named Major that Sid hires to bug Kavyah’s apartment says some of the dumbest things in the dumbest ways, my favorite being “Beautiful bitch, you’ll be finished!” Of course, the signature line of Hate Story is “I fuck the people who fuck with me!”, yelled by Sid several times in increasingly maniacal manners, and later repeated by Kavyah in increasingly taunting manners.

Kavyah Krishnan (Paoli Dam) – Intrepid journalist turned capitalist turned play toy turned scorned and violated woman turned fountain of revenge. Siddharth Dhanrajgir (Gulshan Devaiya) – Arrogant executive at Cementic, a company his father gave him, who uses his power to get even against people who “fucked” him. When Kavyah helps embarrass his company, he hatches a revenge plan that ends in destroying her life, but causing her to seek greater vengeance. Gulshan Devaiya shows good acting when playing the stuttering son being yelled at by his father, but turns into maniacal cheese when playing the villain. Vicky (Nikhil Dwivedi) – Kavyah’s longtime friend and fellow journalist, who watches her rises and falls until the point where he has to give her a big lecture about how it’s just horrible that she’s sleeping with all these dudes when he secretly loves her yet has said nothing ever.

And SPOILERS below…