Lust Stories 3 Story
While Vikramaditya Motwane’s film explores the disappearance and reappearance of love and lust during mid-life, Kiran Rao’s short looks at lust as an entrapment. Shakun Batra’s short explores lust as a route to communicate and escape and Vishal Bhardwaj’s gaze evokes curiosity and letting go off inhibitions.
Lust Stories 3 Review
The ‘Lust Stories’ anthology that began in 2018, was the first title from Netflix’s Indian vault that made waves and ensured that each story boasted of a superlative performance. Fans continue raving about Bhumi Pednekar’s performance in Zoya Akhtar’s short while Kiara Advani’s bold portrayal in Karan Johar’s film, made the audience and the industry to sit up and look at her abilities as an actor beyond being ‘just a pretty face’. Eight years have passed and while both story-telling and viewing have evolved, the vision of the filmmakers in the current instalment, seems to have wandered off. Which is pitiable.
Vikramaditya’s unintentional ‘Ajnabee’ spin-off is outrageous to say the least. It is a different wound altogether to nurse watching a celebrated artist such as Konkona Sen Sharma deliver an over-the-top performance in the said short. While Radhika Apte still manages to lend some dignity to her portrayal, she isn’t able to match up to her own standard that she set in Anurag Kashyap’s film from the 2018 anthology. Vijay Varma and Abhishek Banerjee are terribly wasted.
Kiran’s short isn’t entirely novel in its premise. But while it invokes a certain amount of empathy when conveying how aspirations and ambitions come in the way of intimacy, the treatment is diluted. It doesn’t help that both actors Gurfateh Pirzada and Sana Thampi are extremely wooden with their acting.
Shakun’s film takes a more mature turn, in comparison. As Ali Fazal and Radhika Madan play a couple navigating through the proceedings of their divorce, distance makes them much fonder than they’d prefer. While both actors are not convincing with their performances, the script doesn’t falter. The short effectively looks at how most couples rush through love and marriage out of fear and wanting to appease for the sake of validation and acceptance, but they forget about themselves in the process. This script definitely deserved more screentime.
Lastly, Vishal’s film attempts at lending a dignified language to erotica, through the gaze of a repressed teacher wanting to spice up her relationship with her husband, a doctor who gathers as much affection for her as he does for his patients. Quite amusingly, real-life couple Aditi Rao Hydari and Siddharth are cast but their chemistry is as palpable as cold-storage turkey. Their conversation, laced in the Hyderabadi dialect is enough to make your ears bleed. Even a seasoned actor as Gajraj Rao is unbearable as the patriarch, who insists on being incomprehensible to his co-stars and the audience, while chewing his paan.
Lust Stories 3 verdict
Not stating for effect but the fact that I took a nap before sitting down to pen this review should be enough to convey how exciting Lust Stories 3 was. Even if you’ve exhausted every available option this weekend, staring at the sky is more fascinating than sitting through an anthology that is needlessly long for nearly three hours.
