An open field, the blue sky above and kids playing around with a butterfly caught in a glass jar. It would be the most normal thing to find in an Indian countryside, in this case 1,400 km away from Mumbai.
It is the opening scene of Love Sonia, Tabrez Noorani’s directorial debut, which progresses on to become bleak and dark, as opposed to this bright and happy frame. The film, through the story of Sonia (a fantastic Mrunal Thakur) and her elder sister Rashmi (Riya Sisodiya), unravels the story of international flesh trade—capturing the red-light districts of Mumbai, Hong Kong and Los Angeles.
As the film progresses, light plays an intrinsic part, taking the audience to the darkest of places while exploring flesh trade locations, and then transitioning into areas where there is hope and light. “When we started to make the film, it needed to be authentic. So we went to a lot of real locations where there is very little light,” says Noorani, also talking about cinematographer Lucas Bielan, who has masterfully used minimal lighting. “In the classic way, evil men fall into darkness and the light emerges where it needs to. So, it all stems from being realistic when we set out to make a movie on sex-trafficking or situations in brothels.”
Noorani talks about many films made on the subject in the past that showcase red-light districts as brightly lit areas, where they look beautiful. “But that is not really the case. Maybe some rooms are like that because the person has made it to look like that, but majority of these places are faintly lit and dingy. And that is why we took that approach.”
Noorani, who has been a producer for films like Slumdog Millionaire, Life of Pi, Eat Pray Love, Zero Dark Thirty among others, had been researching for the film for almost 10 years. “Initially, we were under the guise of location scouts. Most of these places seem unreal. You enter a building and it becomes a maze—corridors and corridors, and levels and bunks. The way they use space, it’s crazy, of which I had to take photographs and a lot of it was [recreated] from memory. It was quite shocking to see all these places over the years. I was quite lucky that we actually got back to shoot in these places.”
Shooting was not easy though. “It had to be done very carefully, and we were just in and out,” he says. A lot of the real location scenes were shot in guerrilla style. The crew that Noorani works with is very particular about the permits for shooting, and they managed to get permits from almost everyone. But that didn’t mean it was easy. “Even if we had got the permissions from the society authorities and building owners, it didn’t mean the inhabitants would be comfortable in letting us shoot there, especially when it is a brothel. That part was very tricky.”
Freida Pinto in 'Love Sonia'
In desperate need of money, the father (Adil Hussain) of the two girls decides to sell the elder one to a village pimp, Dada Thakur (Anupam Kher). He is, however, clueless that the younger one, Sonia, would also submit herself to Thakur in her perseverance to find her sister. She does, and ends up in a Mumbai brothel run by the ruthless Faisal (Manoj Bajpayee, who is on a roll these days with varied roles including this one). A virgin village belle, Sonia is a great find for Faisal. She is tortured, beaten up, and taken to far off-shores and exploited.
While the central theme of Sonia’s struggle to relentlessly find her sister runs through the film, other characters bring in layering. For instance, the vulnerability of the otherwise menacing madam of the brothel played by a superlative Richa Chadha. Or an older prostitute (Freida Pinto), sometimes playful and at other times insecure, and who has resigned to her fate. Then, there is an NGO worker, Manish's (Rajkummar Rao), constant attempt to rescue these girls.
Some of these characters are well-defined and add depth to the disturbing plot. Towards the end of the film, however, the cameos by Demi Moore and Mark Duplass, start looking too constructed to give the film a hopeful ending. Perhaps a tool to make the film more likeable. Noorani says, a couple of years back, he was approached to make the script more commercial but he didn't. He rather found it best to stick to reality. However, as is evident, even with the darkness it takes us into, making it claustrophobic and difficult to watch, the film does fall into the trap of making it commercially viable.
Love Sonia is in a territory familiar to us through films like Nagesh Kukunoor’s Lakshmi, or probably an upgraded version of Mira Nair’s Salaam Bombay. But by emphasising at the end that there can be a silver lining to a journey interspersed with so much murkiness, Love Sonia falls short of being in the realistic space. In doing so, it dilutes the intricate message that was built through the course of the film.