'Cocktail 2': Homi Adajania's modern love story suffers from a cool girl hangover

Remember the dialogue from Gillian Flynn’s 2012 book, Gone Girl: “Cool girls are not even pretending to be the woman they want to be, they’re pretending to be the woman a man wants them to be”. It pretty much sums up Kriti Sanon’s Ally in Cocktail 2.

Ally lives in Sicily, with no discernible income; is a “free spirit”, which means she is somewhat unstable; dons swimwear at the slightest provocation; and fancies another woman’s man. Said man, Kunal (Shahid Kapoor) is in a relationship with Diya (Rashmika Mandana), a sometime best friend of Ally. Phew. Since all of them are privileged, they must invent an obstacle to true love. Mandanna conjures a sexual agnipariksha for Kapoor.

If he falls for the cool girl, she is done with him. If he doesn’t, he is hers. This take on Modern Love 101 (more like Male Gaze 101) makes a mockery of the many ways young people are denied love in a country as divided as India. The audience is meant to be seduced by the foreign locations, destination weddings, and jewellery they cannot afford, but this is a desperately uncool film embellished with deceptively cool glistening bodies and sun-kissed cinematography.