Love Hostel movie review: As compared to Shanker Raman’s ‘Gurgaon’, ‘Love Hostel’ has more immediacy in its execution, which makes its nonstop violence more impactful.
Shanker Raman’s ‘Gurgaon’ (2017) was not just a physical brick-and-mortar space, but also a dark, dystopian state of mind, in which ruthless patriarchs don’t bother hiding their iron fists in velvet gloves, tracts of ancestral land become valuable barter, men rule, and women do as they are told. In ‘Love Hostel’, the director picks up from where he left off, as he turns his attention to the interiors of Haryana, where runaway couples do not just earn the wrath of their families, but also the brutal attention of mercenaries hot on their trail. A flowery garland around the neck is exchanged for a lethal rope, leaving a circle of faces around the dangling bodies, some stunned with grief, some alight with unholy glee: the khap’s word is law, and those who cross it do it at their own peril.
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