Lust Stories 3 review: Konkona, Radhika Apte liven up an uneven but enjoyable anthology - The Indian Express
Lust Stories 3 review: Have we finally reached a level of comfort around legit adult themes like love and lust? Going by the thrust on female desire, and the importance of physical intimacy in keeping a relationship alive in Lust Stories 3, it would appear to be so. Hallelujah.
The first edition, out in 2018, felt radical in that it could even use the word in its title, given the insistent prudery surrounding all things sexual in our films. And there was enough in those initial four shorts– hard to forget The Curious Case Of Kiara Advani and the Silent Vibrator– to keep us invested, and interested in what would come next. Except part 2, in 2023, was mostly a dud, with the exception of the episode in which Konkona Sen Sharma as director and actor teamed up with the excellent Amruta Subash for a hot intersection between class and desire.
It’s entirely fitting then that in this new edition, it is Sen Sharma and her partner-in-crime, this time Radhika Apte, who liven up things the most, in Vikramaditya Motwane’s segment on two married couples swapping partners. The men, played by Vijay Varma and Abhishek Banerjee, find themselves in the unusual position of being played, and go along with it, till something happens.
Lurching through their favourite K-dramas, where soft-focus romance presumably leads to satisfactory sex, and middle-class preoccupations revolving around husbands and children, both Sen Sharma and Apte (the latter in a finely-judged role without a single exaggeration which makes for a welcome change from her usual familiarity), are wonderful; Varma and Banerjee go along gamely.
I also enjoyed Vishal Bharadwaj’s hark-back to the 80s, with its setting of conservative Muslim Hyderabad seen through the doe-eyed Aditi Rao Hydari, who loves her husband (Sidharth) but wishes he would linger under the sheets rather than their perfunctory Friday-Jumma routine of khatakhat, phataphat, rollover, snore.
It does get stretched in parts, when Bhardwaj gets a little carried away in depicting the dream-sequences in which the staid hakeem husband morphs into a slender male sylph, a towel draped dangerously low over his hips, very Ranbir Kapoor-Saawariya-style, who knows just how to pleasure his lady.
But the whole atmospheric set-up, in which Hydari plays a teacher lording it over swooning teenagers stealth-reading their pulpy Macy-and-Ben novels (why couldn’t they just have said Mills&Boons?) who ends up writing a racy book herself with plenty of toe-curling activities, is a guilty pleasure drenched in red. And right now, as far as I’m concerned, Sidharth can do no wrong: he aces the campy faun look with such ease that I won’t be surprised he is the next pin-up amongst guys and gals and everyone in between.
Shakun Batra’s estranged pair, played by Ali Fazal and Radhika Madan, are back together for what they think will be smooth divorce proceedings. The benefits that go with having been a couple who lit up the most when rolling in the sheets, come roaring back too. Fazal and Madan (the latter thankfully having shifted away from her nasal delivery) make you believe that they are struggling with the problem of how they can’t talk without biting each others’ heads off, while at the same time how they can’t keep their hands off each other. But there isn’t enough edge in this one.
And that’s what plagues Kiran Rao’s short, with the thing between a pizza-delivery-boy-cum mobster-dogsbody (Gurfateh Pirzada) and an ambitious nail artist (Sana Thampi is a welcome fresh face) turning into a twist you can see coming a mile off.
But for what it’s worth, these lust stories may be uneven, but they are enjoyable all the same. The big O is no longer a hush-hush secret. It is to want, and to have. Yay.
