Despite their wafer-thin character graphs in 'Looop Lapeta', Taapsee Pannu and Tahir Raj Bhasin somewhat manage to keep the interest going. (Photo via Netflix)
Tom Tykwer’s German film Run Lola Run was novel in several ways when it released 21 years ago. Its kinetic, futuristic language supplementing a dark comic grain made it a tour de force even though the film had little going for it in terms of story or character. It was a triumph of form over material, of pyrotechnics over character and story—almost like a cinematic video game, as if an arrant and hip Berlin film-maker had reinterpreted Groundhog Day to suit a post-MTV, post-Matrix generation of movie-goers.
The inspiration and motivation for Akash Bhatia to direct and co-write Looop Lapeta, the Indian adaptation of Run Lola Run for Netflix, is obvious from the very first frame. He wanted to replicate the film, and not reimagine or reinterpret or contextualise it for a world that runs largely on digital natives in 2022.
Satya (Tahir Raj Bhasin) stops Savi (Taapsee Pannu) from committing suicide. Savi is a sprinter who loses her ability to compete in track and field after a grave knee injury. Satya is a small-time gambler who also works for a gangster Victor (Dibyendu Bhattacharya).
Satya and Savi soon become inseparable as lovers. The thorn in this seemingly poetic hook-up: Satya literally can’t get anything right, and Savi believes she can do anything.
When Satya’s boss asks him to deliver a packet to a destination and bring Rs 50 lakh back to him in exchange for a bonus, Satya predictably loses all the money. He calls up Savi in panic, because if he doesn’t deliver the cash to Victor within 80 minutes, Victor will slay him—literally. Savi sprints across town to save Satya.
Along the way, she stops at the boxing arena which is his father’s stomping ground as coach, at a jeweller who has two doltish sons, a bride contemplating running away with her taxi driver lover, and other street fixtures, trying all means to get the Rs 50 lakh and get to Satya to save him. The first attempt ends disastrously, but she can turn the clock back and do things over. Can she eventually save her boyfriend and get her happy-ever-after?
Exactly like the original, Looop Lapeta has a frenzied tempo, visual fireworks—the colour scheme has a suffusion of saturated reds and greens—and pulsating music. But these experiments in form—if split screens, fish-eye lens cinematography and slow motion on stop-motion can still be called experimental—wears away pretty soon.
Dialogues are twisted and delivered fever-pitch, and yet there’s little that’s genuinely humorous in the world of Satya and Savi. We know a little bit about Savi, and nothing about Satya. Feeling for this couple’s predicament is not easy. But character and back story are not really the point of this film.
The challenge of remaking a cult film whose mileage depended entirely on its form, is how the writers and the director can take the form further—by subverting it or contextualising it to the age and culture it belongs to. For the generation that has grown up watching MTV and long moved on to Instagram filters, chroma keys and thousands of different variations in transition and visual effects, the stylish flourishes of Looop Lapeta seem outrageously dated. The language which the Run Lola Run maker developed has aged, transmuted and cultivated the appetite for its smart subversion. Even a Matrix film has to rely on audacious new edges to make the cut among audiences now.
The two actors at the helm, despite their wafer-thin character graphs, somewhat manage to keep the interest going. Pannu’s physicality, fitness and uproarious pitch along with her girl-next-door vibe work up to a point. For Bhasin, the frantically helpless nerves of Satya are no match to some of the recent roles he has played (in Netflix’s Yeh Kaali Kaali Aankhen, for example). He flaps and screams through every turn of the fated day.
In the end, we don’t care if the couple can unite and walk away into the “Tandovi” sunset—as opposed to Mandovi sunset, because Goa is surreptitious as a setting for reasons best known to the makers; every reference to a Goan landmark is spelled off-kilter. The stylish signature would look stale to the movie-discerning, movie-loving, post-Matrix consumer of the moving visual.
The one-line concept which the protagonists spell out more than once in dialogues—‘Everything can change in a day’, an ode to the machinations of fate—has a universal ring to it. But as far as form and style go, Looop Lapeta proves that sometimes thousands of days aren’t enough to reimagine the jostling, spiffy energy that the little gem of a world-famous German film gave to the world 21 years ago.
Checkout Budget Highlights 2023
