Lust Stories (2018)

You won't be disappointed!

Thanks for the memories!

This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

Worth seeing just to witness how winsome it is.

This movie has too many things wrong with it. I love watching empowered women on the screen, but there's no great shakes if you get there by caricaturing everyone else. Radhika Apte is a great actress. But that atrocious script. Which teenage blogger did they flick it from? Even Radhika seems self-conscious as if she is in some kind of spoof. You can almost see her breaking out of character and laughing at how ridiculous the plot and her character is. Such a waste of talent. Zoya Akhtar's bit. Wow. If Zoya was given ten more minutes, we could have gotten to see more shots of Bhumika with an expectant face fold the bath towels, Bhumi with an expectant face put detergent powder in the washing machine, Bhumi with an expectant face fetch milk from a cow, Bhumi with an expectant face bargain the price of onions, Bhumi with an expectant face make mango pickles. You get the point. By putting her nose to the grindstone while the rest of the "elite" do smalltalk and drink tea, I guess Zoya was trying to win your sympathy towards Bhumi who incidentally was also sleeping with the man of the house. Bravo. RIP screenwriting. Koirala's bit. By the time I got to this part, I had lost any hope that this movie would be a sensitive portrayal of an extra-marital affair intertwined with male friendship. And boy, this bit didn't disappoint at all. As much thought was put into this script as I put into brushing my teeth in the morning. Koirala looks like a boss, albeit somewhat haggardly, because she shares the frame with two bumbling idiots, she wouldn't be caught dead sleeping with. KJo's bit. Holy batman! Why were those two schoolteachers always dressed like they were teaching fine arts at a brothel? And grow up Bollywood. Masturbation. Sex toys. Premature ejaculation. These are commonplace. Don't milk it dry because you can.I gave myself three stars for sitting through this movie, but then didn't know what do with them stars so I am passing it on to this movie.

Nope despite some of the feminist connotations to each of the short stories this is a movie meant for men who lust or atleast wished they could have lust-worthy sex-crazed indian women like Radhika Apte, Kiara Advani, Bhumi Pednekar and Neha Dhupia.Don't let any official summary fool you into believing what this movie really is for. The movie targets the sexual fantasies of indian men towards women in particular roles they come across in life and society - sex with the hot teacher, hot maid, hot matrimonial match etc. There's no denying the power in the sexual appeals of Radhika, Kiara and Bhumi in their respective class acts. Ideally young hottie Nikita Dutta who plays the prospective bride in Zoya Akhtar's segment should've also been explored more. The movie is divided into 4 stories with the extremely unwatchable one being Dibakar Banerjee's. I can only imagine his segment was added in the midst of the movie to cool down temperatures or kill sexual moods that the movie does a great job of evoking from get-go. Overall watchable fare for most men who can ignore the forced representation and feministic tale-telling of supposed sexually confused, reserved, open indian women. Just watch it for the lovely women and nothing more!

Finally some stories that don't needlessly romanticise sexuality. Storytelling, acting and direction is steadily robust across the four stories. You can definitely see the strong imprint of each director if you have watched their movies in the past.

A since the turn of the century, there have been quite a few mainstream anthology films in Bollywood. One of them was Bombay Talkies that was released around Bollywood's centenary year, directed by 4 mainstream directors. The same directors come back together to deliver 'Lust Stories'. While that was pretty much a compilation of stories from different parts of Mumbai, this a step ahead trying to tie stories based on an emotion. Though we did have movies from RGV camp like Darna Manaa Hai and Darna Zaroori Hai, that had Horror as the binding theme, and among them only Darna Zaroori hai had stories from multiple directors, but an attempt like this is a rarity in general. So it was good to see an attempt to bring together different director's take on an emotion, that too one which is understood pretty linearly, but has complicated impact on us as beings.What I find interesting is that while the stories are not connected to each other, the directors chose to not give a name to their stories. So let's explore these segments further.The first story by Anurag Kashyap, shows a college lecturer Kalandi, who has gone through her adolescence without having a fling and is married to someone much older than her and has had more than his share of those. She is encouraged by her husband to be open to explore beyond her marriage and have more stories to say about her life. So to achieve that, she utilizes her authority to become intimate with a student, Tejas. She is trying to be promiscuous, but her behavior is not driven by lust as it is with others. Thus, she can't just have a fling with Tejas without being utterly possessive about him and ends up stalking him, while making her attempts pretty obvious. She realizes her irrationality as she tries to be hopelessly hopeful of being something that she is not, lustful. It was a great script helped by a couple of beautiful songs by Amit Trivedi. Wonderful take on the emotion, or on trying to feign it.Second segment by Zoya is certainly a surprise offering from her. She breaks away her mold to tell the story of Sudha, a household maid of a middle class bachelor Ajit, who is physically intimate with him. Amidst the mundane chores of daily life, she gets her spark from these moments, something she probably looks forward to. Much of the screen time shows her mental state as she crumbles within while holding her composure, assisting in hosting the family of the girl that is going to marry Ajit. In her silence, she curses herself for harboring any feelings of comfort and security, while having always known that this relationship was only defined by Ajit's lust. I think the last scene is the defining moment where she accepts she can't break away from her fate, and is content to accept whatever she was able to get from her relationship that was possible only because of lust. Kudos! to Bhumi, for her portrayal of Sudha.The third segment by Dibakar is a mature take on how lust and other circumstances define how we choose our relationships, which in turn define our lives. As we face existential questions in our lives, we tend to look beyond the quest for excitement that our lust drives and assess how to manage it viz-a-viz our other aspirations in life. While coming of age stories show emancipation through acceptance of the emotion, this one shows emancipation through being able to look beyond it. It is an attempt to put into 30 minutes what could have been a great 2 hours film, thanks to many layers that it unfolds. This brevity snatches the opportunity for character development, leaving a lot to be conveyed through unspoken words. While it tackles the emotion with maximum depth, it was probably not mean for depiction through this medium.The fourth segment by K.Jo has the trademark style of dharma productions written all over it. It is straightforward and loud in tackling the subject, has Neha Dhupia and Kiara Advani driving up the oomph factor in the way they dress up and carry themselves. There isn't much creativity in the depiction of a newlywed wife that wants to satisfy her libido, a naive husband that is oblivious to it and a society that thinks lowly of such urges and a funny scene, adapted from 'The Ugly Truth', incorporated for entertainment. A superficial take on the subject, packaging the obvious connotations that one would attach to the emotion in general conversations in our society.All in all a great attempt to piece together an anthology film, on an emotion that is often depicted with corrupt connotations and vulgarity, thanks to its attachment to one verb that I was able to avoid throughout this review, 'Sex'.