Looop Lapeta
Starring Taapsee Pannu, Tahir Raj Bhasin
Directed by Aakash Bhatia
There is something to be said about a film that doesn’t shy away from its chaotic scenario. In fact, Looop Lapeta welcomes it. There is an arresting anarchy at the heart of this audacious endeavour to combine the heist genre with the cinema of self-realization. The fusion almost works.
Not that there are any breathing spaces for philosophical ruminations. The pacing is breakneck. And the characters that Savi(short for Savina) played by the ever-adventurous Taapsee Pannu, encounters in her heaving journey to save her wastrel boyfriend Satyajit(Tahir Raj Bhasin) from being annihilated by his sinister boss(Dibyendu Bhattacharya),will have you gasping for breath. This is not what Savi or the audience signed up for.
There is a peculiar kind of energy at work here; a sort of Savi-on-wheels-or-is-it-something-else kind of loco logic runs through this runner’s raga. As Savi(na), Taapsee is full-on into the business of doing a mythological Savitri on her Satyavan by rescuing her from the Yamaraj in his life. Why else do you think the misled pair is named Savi and Satya?
Also around is an inconsolable cabbie named Jacob(Sameer Kevin Roy), who is in love with Julia(Shreya Dhanwanthary). It’s an endearing subplot pinned precociously into the simmering plot by the two young actors who play Jacob and Julia.
Gappu(Raghav Raj Kakker) and Appu(Manik Papneja ) join the hectic fun as siblings planning to rob their own jeweler-dad(Rajendra Chawla). Their rehearsals before the Big Bang(which whimpers into an anticlimax) are hilarious largely for the two actors playing the daft brothers. Papneja specially is a comic talent to watch out for.
Another sub-plot—yes, one more—is about Savi coming to terms with her Dad(K C Shankar)’s affair with a young man. This, I confess,I’ve never seen in any Indian film. Liberal times? Or just a wacked-out one-off zany rom-com romp into a tongue-in-cheek immortality tale?
It’s Taapsee Pannu who again holds the anarchic plot together. She is in-charge, and she knows it, giving her best shot to her agile, eccentric part bringing to the table a kind of self-aware fun that actors seldom dare to venture into our films lest they be dubbed careless or incompetent.
It is a miracle that the director has managed to assemble such an eclectic ensemble cast and yet succeeded in giving the narrative a complete look. For all its diversions into sub-plots Looop Lapeta never loses it way. It remains till the end a droll dive into a world of crime and surrealism with the grammar of whimsicality governing every twist in the plot.
Fun, if you are not looking for two hours of cerebral salvation.
