Hindi movie “Love Sonia” is the directorial debut of Tabrez Noorani, the producer of the Oscar-winning “Slumdog Millionaire” and considering this as his debut directorial venture, does not disappoint. It is the story of a rural Indian village girl forced into the sex trade and then shipped to California. “Live Sonia” presents the dark underbelly of a supposedly rising and shining India.
It also brings into sharp focus what is often dubbed a local phenomenon with a global impact. Sadly the Film also exposes the unawareness or calculated ignorance of the West about the barbaric sex trade in India, how it destroys myriad lives even to this day.
A drought-prone village and a debt-ridden father is not a rarity in modern India. Dire circumstances force him to sell off one of his daughter Preeti to a local landlord. Her sister, Sonia sets off to trace her sibling and lands herself in the horrific world of sex trade and prostitution.
A saga of unimaginable brutality
Humans have been on this blue planet for years but have woefully not evolved to the level of his closest cousins. The film acknowledges the fact that the most significant victory is survival and the flick accurately chronicles the never say die attitude of Sonia who undergoes tremendous brutality but her spirit to survive does not diminish.
New film ‘Love Sonia’ is the story of a girl in India who finds herself caught up in the global sex trafficking industry. @BecauseImFreida of Slumdog Millionaire is one of its stars. She's on right now! https://t.co/vRXcSlpKJY pic.twitter.com/HSIsoVVWSs
— BBC Woman's Hour (@BBCWomansHour) January 23, 2019
The flick is not for the faint-hearted and whatever horrific can happen to a human being happens to the girl as the audience watch in horror as it unfolds one dermal layer after another.
Not for the faint-hearted
Tabrez does not sugar coat the brutality of the subject nor does he spare the audience of the agony of the traumatisation of the child and adolescent sex worker. The horrible, resolute and distinctive scenes are executed to its graphics execution almost suffocating the viewer.
Too predictable and situation sewed to make the audience cringe
However, the film cannot be classified as flawless, and there are striking anomalies which stand out rather jarringly. The bond between the two siblings is not established to justify Sonia’s final rendezvous with the dark sex trade world. The film also could be faulted as being too predictable, and the situations are woven together like a tapestry to evolve cringe and disgust.
However, the real intent of the director is never in question and the characters played by the actors are flawless and compelling.
The film is unlikely to give any sort of competition to the recently released films 'Manikarnika, The Queen of Jhansi" or "Thackeray."
