#sexandlust

[kerception]

Lust Stories - mature and not frivolous

Image source: www.fg.com 

An anthology of films about lust out of South Asia would surprise many, but they are definitely long overdue. Before delving into the specifics of each film, something that applies to all four is that sex and lust aren’t dealt with the usual strokes of skin, amateur depictions of sex and sexuality. Instead, all four films speak (not always successfully) to the core of the human experience and intimate relationships in general. I’ll leave my favourite film for last, while the other three I will speak about without an order of preference.

Anurag Kashyap’s film is the most erratic of the group. An erratic narrative can be well crafted, if it doesn’t fall into the trap of repetition and characters lacking an arc. The protagonist is a young professional (college teacher), who decides to sleep with one of her students. After the night is done, she puts the guy on notice that he should not think much of what happened and her only real fear is that he might get emotional and attached, given the fact that it was his first time being with a woman. The setup is interesting, even the fact that the woman is calling the shots, but then the narrative takes a nosedive. Radhika Apte playing the college teacher Kalindi tries quite unsuccessfully to steer clear of coming across as over the top and purposelessly dramatic. Kalindi becomes excessively possessive of the young man; while she doesn't want to commit to anything with him, but constantly calls him out on his relationships and the women he is dating. There is also a lot of time spent with Kalindi sitting in front of the camera. She tries to speak to the problems of contemporary relationships, the emotional entanglements that come with, but most of that is rambling. I really didn’t care much about the narrative after the first ten odd minutes and the thirty plus minute length of the film is just painfully long.

Karan Johar’s film about a newly married couple, where the husband is unable to comprehend his wife’s needs at intimacy is funny, with Neha Dhupia playing this small but incredibly brilliant character. She is a divorcee but refuses to be judged and lives her sexuality on her own terms. She takes sexual power by the horns and snatches it away for herself. She is empowering through and through. While not the protagonist, she was truly the highlight of the film. The couple’s story (played by Kaira Advani and Vicky Kaushal) which has spurts of entertainment and their attempted reconciliation to solve their marital problems, against all social and family odds is overall charming and leaves you feeling heartened.

Dibanker Banerjee's film had a sense of maturity about it, given the subject matter, however I found it quite tedious. I get the principle: unhappy couple, tied together because of financial and social factors, wife is cheating on the husband with the best friend, but it's mostly a been their seen that kinda narrative. While heavyweights like Sanjay Kapoor, Manisha Koirala and Jaideep Ahlawat add some heft to the film, overall it was underdeveloped both in terms of characters and narrative. The film leaves us without a resolution, which perhaps is closer to how life is, but felt quite unsatisfying.

My favorite film was Zoya Akhtar’s beautifully crafted story about a forbidden relationship, entangled with social and economic disparities and their naked severity. Bhumi Padnekar’s restrained performance spoke volumes of how pervasive our social hierarchies are. Zoya knew that a social commentary about sex and lust would be brilliantly represented through the prism of economic differences and she drove the message home in a poetically subtle manner, free of any histrionics. 

While all of the films differed in narrative quality and what they were able to achieve, it’s no mean feat to put together an anthology like this that primarily speaks about women and their quiet fight for equality, in being able to express their sexuality. I appreciated the maturity with which all subjects were tackled and the purposeful avoidance of frivolous and stereotypical depictions of sex and lust.  

The choice to release the films on Netflix as an anthology was interesting. I hope people far and wide get to watch, what surely in an interesting/welcome change for South Asian cinema. Lust Stories is now on Netflix.