Love Games is Inspired by My Life, Says Vikram Bhatt

Mumbai: His upcoming film Love Games might be bold and sensational for the audience, but for its director Vikram Bhatt the movie is extremely personal as he said that it is inspired from his life story.

The film is based on swingers, people who are in a relationship but also like being physically intimate with others, and follows the story of one such couple, played by Patralekha and Gaurav Arora.

"The movie is inspired by my life. I have dated women, I have been with a swinger, I have not done that so much myself, but I have seen that life up close and personal," Mr Bhatt told PTI.

Love Games, scheduled to release on April 8, also stars Tara Alisha Berry in the lead. Mr Bhatt said it was a conversation he had with a 20-year-old girl whom he met at a shopping mall which convinced him that audience is ready to watch films on bold topics.

"While I was talking to her, I said the audience is not ready for bold films and the girl said the viewers have been ready for years now, but it is the filmmakers who aren't. In this day and age of internet, where we have several dating sites, it is bizarre to say the audience is not ready to watch bolder themes," he said.

The filmmaker, who earlier directed movies like 1920, Ankahee and Haunted, did not face any issue with the censor board as he directly got the film passed from Film Certification Appellate Tribunal (statutory body under the I&B Ministry).

"The film has been given an 'A' certificate. We went to the tribunal directly and got it passed without any cuts. If a producer goes to the censor at the last minute, just before the film releases, then he often settles with cuts because he cannot afford to lose any more time.

"In our case, we moved to the tribunal even before our publicity began and so had an elbow room," he said.

Mr Bhatt said there should be a committee which, instead of censoring movies, gives them various tags which will become easier for viewers to decide if they want to watch it or not.

"There should be a list with various categories like 'violence', 'bad language', 'obscenity', 'nudity'. The committee should watch the film and then decide the criteria the movie meets.

"Accordingly, the film's poster should have the appropriate tags along with it so that the patron knows that this film will have 'violence', 'bad language', etc. If you go to see that film, you will get all these things. That's simple," said Mr Bhatt.