6. Lust Stories (2018)
This is an anthology film comprising of four shorts which have been directed by four strong directorial voices of present India. Anurag Kashyap, Zoya Akhtar, Dibakar Banerjee, and Karan Johar are the four directors who joined hands for this venture after their 2014 project together in the same format which was called ‘Bombay Talkies’. Each of the stories has got something to do with $e-xual desire. The first story is that of a teacher who has fallen for one of her students, but she is only in it because her boyfriend is far away and she craves $e-x. She does enjoy her time with the guy, but when he starts taking the relationship seriously, problems begin for her. Another story, deftly shot inside a small Mumbai apartment shows that a maid has an intense $e-xual relationship with the young man whom she works for, but when his parents meet with his fiancee’s folks in the same apartment, things get interesting.
The third story is about a middle-aged trio. Two of them are married while the third one is an old friend of the husband’s. However, the husband comes to know that his friend and wife are brewing up a storm under the sheets when he is not around. None of the characters seem happy with their positions in life despite being affluent, probably reflecting the lack of a soul among people in this world constantly alienating us from our surroundings. The fourth movie is a comedy and personally, I find it the best of the lot. It is the story of a girl who has recently married into this traditional Indian family. Although her husband is very sweet to her, she remains $e-xually unsatisfied and thus decides to buy a vibrator to pleasure herself. A hilarious scene involving a public display of $e-xual pleasure in this short takes a bold step in Indian films while talking about the expressions of a woman’s desires.
