Lust Stories 3

Lust Stories 3 is the third instalment of the popular Netflix franchise, exploring various dimensions of human desire through four shorts helmed by Kiran Rao, Vikramaditya Motwane, Vishal Bhardwaj and Shakun Batra. Konkona Sen, Radhika Apte, Ali Fazal, Vijay Varma, Sana Thampi, Siddharth, Gurfateh Pirzada, Aditi Rao Hydari and others essay key roles. Desire comes in many shapes and sizes, something that Lust Stories on Netflix has addressed with the sensitivity it merits, removing the ‘shame’ angle from the discussion. Roping in big names, both actors and directors, has given the franchise a widespread reach across both seasons, making it a conversation starter.

If the birth of Lust Stories was a shout for liberation, a tearing down of the velvet curtains that long hid Indian intimacy, then the third iteration is the echo. Helmed by a new set of original voices — Shakun Batra, Vikramaditya Motwane, Kiran Rao, and Vishal Bhardwaj — and bolstered by an ensemble of actors who translate subtext through the vocabulary of body language, it does not seek to shock, nor does it carry the heavy burden of breaking taboos. It treats desire not as a provocative statement, but as a messy mirror. The four-part anthology shows how physical proximity often masks isolation in modern relationships. It shows how lust is weaponised, bargained with, or surrendered to. In the earlier films of the franchise, the stories followed a clear arc of liberation, a character realising their worth or claiming their pleasure. Here, within the recognisable OTT beats, the liberation is rarely external. In three segments, intimacy is readily available, but real emotional safety is scarce.

Lust Stories, right from the beginning, when the first part was released in 2020, raised eyebrows. Since then, several other similar films and series have come up on OTT- all exploring female sexual desires- some landed, some did not, but the charm of Lust Stories and subsequently of Lust Stories 2 has had a different effect on the audience. How many mainstream filmmakers have attempted to explore what women want and ultimately got it right? In Lust Stories 3, filmmakers Vikramaditya Motwane, Kiran Rao, Shakun Batra and Vishal Bhardwaj speak of Lust, an emotion that often brings out the best and worst in any human being.

Netflix’s Lust Stories is the only anthology to have made it to its third season, and there might be good reason. For a society as repressed as ours, sex brings out adequate intrigue on the part of the audience, assuring a base viewership. Meanwhile, by constantly shuffling filmmakers, the interpretations remain fresh, and sex becomes a capsule to be filled with commentary on inequities, female desire, and a rarely spoken language in an otherwise verbose film industry. Lust Stories 3 features a line-up of directors, which audiences will forever be curious about: Kiran Rao, Vikramaditya Motwane, Shakun Batra and Vishal Bhardwaj. The results are middling to positive. But one thing I genuinely appreciated about all four films, is their intent to showcase the length and breadth of Hindi cinema, and its varying aesthetic, refusing to paint Bollywood as a monolith – which it has begun to seem like, given its over-dependence on star-led spectacles. Also, I enjoyed the music in all films, complimenting the sensibility of the respective mise en scene.

It’s a talent riot! Four of India’s best directors, a cast that stands tall by the sheer virtue of talent, and a subject which, as a rule, makes most of us squirm. The ‘Lust Stories’ franchise, ever since it made its foray on Netflix, has treaded forbidden territory. Desires, lurking deep within, have leapt on our screens in many forms. Sure enough, the three-letter word, sex, has come out of the closet and yet not quite. Women’s sexual desires are still spoken about in whispers, at least among the old school. The third outing, even with acclaimed directors at the helm, does not really offer anything as path-breaking as the first Emmy-nominated season.

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 Sensharma as director and actor teamed up with the excellent Amruta Subash for a hot intersection between class and desire.

Kiran Rao is a talented filmmaker. She is also an incredibly clever storyteller. The latter is evident, and palpably so, in her segment of Lust Stories 3. The second film in Netflix’s latest instalment of its four-in-one anthology — that has looked at relationships, sex and (mostly female) desire through an often cheeky, mostly empathetic and sometimes outlandish lens, over three outings — is the one that gets the memo most accurately. Rao’s film doesn’t have a name. None of the four in Lust Stories 3 does, except being interconnected by certain timelines, which may or may not intersect. They also may or may not make sense.