Loev
2016 · Directed by Sudhanshu Saria
Original language: Hindi
- drama
- romance
The story
When hot shot, Wall Street dealmaker Jai thinks of putting some pleasure into his 48 hour business trip to Mumbai, Sahil, his young, music-producer friend, drops everything, including his reckless boyfriend Alex, to help him execute the perfect getaway. Hiking the hills and canyons of Maharashtra, amidst half-attempted conversations and sudden silences, business calls and old jokes, the friends discover there is more than just time-zones keeping them apart. Things take another turn when Alex shows up with a new male-companion at his side, throwing up old conflicts and bringing unanswered questions to the fore.
What it’s like
Unhurried, conversational scenes built around two men walking, talking and falling silent in open hill country outside Mumbai, with the city's glare and phone-screen blue giving way to dusty green slopes and wide daylight. Expect a naturalistic, low-key look: handheld-leaning intimacy in the quieter moments, ordinary daylight rather than stylised lighting, and long beats where the silence does as much work as the dialogue. The vibe is wistful and warm with a current of unease, the kind of bittersweet tension between old friends that sits somewhere between reunion and reckoning. It suits a slow weekend afternoon, a thoughtful evening alone, or a viewing with someone you'd like to talk to afterwards. Pacing is gentle and deliberate, and the emotional register stays understated. Its central relationship follows two friends slowly confronting what lies unspoken between them, with the arrival of a third person forcing old questions into the open. Violence is absent from the material, and the intensity comes from emotional honesty and romantic tension, not from threat or graphic content. It is for viewers who want an intimate, character-led queer story set against a distinctly Indian landscape, and who are happy with restraint over resolution.
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