Lust Stories 3
慕情のアンソロジー3
Storyline
The whole story, ending included.
The anthology's third round, from four directors new to it; Radhika Apte returns from the first, as one of two wives who plan to seduce each other's husbands.
Four short films by four directors, the series' third collection.
In Vikramaditya Motwane's story, Padma (Radhika Apte) and Shonali (Konkona Sen Sharma), best friends in their forties, no longer have sex with their husbands, Hemant (Vijay Varma) and Debendu (Abhishek Banerjee). A Korean drama about swapping partners gives Shonali an idea: a weekend in Khandala where each wife will seduce the other's husband. Debendu and Padma click at once; Shonali, fed false tips by a jealous Padma, gets nowhere with Hemant. After a night of dancing Hemant is hurt in a fall, and Shonali finds Padma and Debendu undressing each other. In the ambulance, Padma and Hemant find their way back to each other and make love. Shonali leaves Debendu in their room and dances alone in the empty hall until the hotel manager, David, joins her.
In Kiran Rao's story, Lisa (Sana Thampi), a nail artist from Kerala in Mumbai, starts sleeping with Karan (Gurfateh Pirzada), who delivers pizzas as cover for the drugs he sells with his identical twin, Arjun. Karan hides a large consignment in Lisa's flat. When Arjun comes for the money posing as Karan, Lisa plays along. She knows, and she has already found the stash. She swaps the cash for fake notes and vanishes, the money meant for a salon of her own. The twins flee Mumbai, and on the road a remark from their mother gives Arjun away.
In Shakun Batra's story, Varun (Ali Fazal) and Sailee (Radhika Madan), who married after three months and separated after five years, are made to wait six months for their divorce. They keep fighting and keep ending up in bed. With their therapist's help they learn to talk, and they walk into the final hearing holding hands, ready to part as friends.
In Vishal Bhardwaj's story, set in Hyderabad in 1987, Saira (Aditi Rao Hydari), who teaches Urdu literature at a conservative women's college, writes an erotic story to show her students that Urdu can do what their racy paperbacks do. The notebook goes missing, and a student's parents publish it under a pen name. Chulbuli Begum becomes a bestseller. When Saira finally goes to confess to her husband, the doctor Badru (Siddharth), she learns he has been reading it, and learning from it, all along.
Starring
Konkona Sen Sharmaas Shonali Ghosh
Padma's best friend, in a sexless marriage to Debendu, who dreams up the partner-swapping weekend in Khandala.
Shonali Ghosh’s story
Shonali is in her forties, and her husband, Debendu, would rather sit at his computer than come to bed. When a Korean drama about swapping partners gives her an idea, she talks a reluctant Padma into a weekend in Khandala, passed off as a birthday trip, where each wife will seduce the other's husband. Nothing goes her way. Padma, jealous, feeds her false tips, and Hemant walks out of the evening she has staged for him. The two friends quarrel, get high together and make up. That night Hemant is hurt in a fall at the club, and Shonali, back at the rooms, finds Padma and Debendu undressing each other. She leaves Debendu in their room and dances alone in the empty hall until the hotel manager, David, joins her. The story stops there.
Radhika Apteas Padma
Hemant's wife, who agrees to the swap with misgivings and then, out of jealousy, sabotages her friend's part in it.
Sana Thampias Lisa
A nail artist from Kerala in Mumbai, who sees through the twins' deception and quietly turns it to her own ends.
Lisa’s story
Lisa falls for Karan, a pizza delivery man, at first sight. He is using her: first his drugs, then his takings, go into a hiding place in her flat. But Lisa finds the stash in her bathroom, works out that Karan has an identical twin, and says nothing. When Arjun turns up passing himself off as Karan, she sleeps with him, knowing who he is. When she overhears that the handover of the money has been put off by a week, she takes her chance: she swaps the cash for fake notes, quits her job at the nail studio and vanishes from Mumbai. The last time she is seen, she is relaxing in a hotel far from the city, the money meant for a beauty salon of her own.
Ali Fazalas Varun Apte
Sailee's husband, waiting out a six-month divorce period, unable either to let her go or to talk to her.
Radhika Madanas Sailee Vaidya
Varun's wife, separated after five years of marriage, who keeps ending up in bed with him while the divorce waits.
Sailee Vaidya’s story
Sailee married Varun after three months together, and five years on it is she who files for divorce, citing a marriage without sex. The judge will not waive the six-month wait. When she goes back to their old flat for her things, a fight over a painting they bought together ends in bed, and so do the fights that follow, to the bewilderment of both families. In their therapist's room the two of them see that sex has become the only way they still talk. So they begin to talk: about his mother's hold on their lives, even in the flat he found for them one floor above his parents'; about how little each understood the other. Six months later she walks into the final hearing holding Varun's hand, ready to part as friends.
Aditi Rao Hydarias Saira
A lecturer in Urdu literature in 1987 Hyderabad, whose secret erotic story becomes a bestseller under a pen name.
Saira’s story
Saira loves her husband, Badru, a homeopath who answers her longing with remedies. When her students at the women's college pass round a racy paperback series, she finds it crude and argues that desire can be written well. Challenged to prove it, she writes a story in which an idealised Badru descends from heaven to make love to her, and lends the notebook to her class. It goes missing, and resurfaces as Chulbuli Begum, published under a pen name by a student's parents to save their failing press. Men across the city buy it. Saira panics and refuses to write more. When she finally goes to tell Badru, she finds he has been reading the book, and learning from it, all along, and he hopes its author will write another.
Why it matters
The four stories share one plain subject: what happens to desire inside a long relationship, and whether a woman can say what she wants. Two friends try to mend sexless marriages with a scheme borrowed from television, and the scheme exposes the marriages instead. A divorcing couple find that sex is the only conversation they can still finish. A nail artist takes what the men around her assumed she would never notice. And in Bhardwaj's Hyderabad of 1987, one woman's private erotic writing becomes, anonymously, the sex education the men of a conservative city never had, her own husband among them. Several reviewers found this instalment milder than the earlier ones; The Hindu's critic wrote that it sheds the franchise's past shock value for the terrain of emotional isolation. What it leaves open is a quiet question: whether pleasure can be learned once a woman is allowed to write it down.