Lust Stories is out on Netflix, and I applaud these four distinct filmmakers for exploring this anthological format and still maintaining their originality of vision. Your mileage may vary on which film you like best, but it is heartening to watch these creators decode the idea of lust and never attempt to titillate. That would be too obvious. Carnality, after all, is only part of the equation. The headiness of lust lies also in the exhalation, the smile, the laugh. Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Come.

My advice would be to watch all four films as a whole and in the order the filmmakers intended. It’s more enriching.

Go for Lust Stories as it explores the less charted plane of female desires and the acceptance of lust, from filmmakers of an industry which relies more on romance and love, in every form. Mind you, the film will make you question the intermingling realms of love and lust, maybe not in the most flattering way, but in an attention-grabbing way, for sure.

After a few misses, Netflix, known for its edgy content, scores by picking up these tales which document the set ways of society as well as the changing dynamics, that’s not confined to under the bedsheets. These are fun, poignant and introspective tales that attempt to unravel the mysteries of women’s heart.

Through four short films, directed by four of the country’s most prominent Hindi filmmakers, it presents the sort of unusual stories that feel fresh, yet familiar. It’s almost like a sampling platter that you might find at a fancy restaurant, an unexpected marriage of contrasting styles and sensibilities, tones and textures that highlights the best (and worse) of what we have to offer.

Given the talent involved, its feeble male presence and failure to look beyond heterosexual framework is disappointing. But it is also definitely worth a watch for exactly the same reason.

In Lust Stories, the directors have a huge field to play around in and they make the most of it. They prove that lust, after all, is yet another expression of love.  

It’s remarkable though how four shorts, on the face of it, about something as perfunctory as lust at first night, packed neatly into two hours, delves so seamlessly into seemingly uncomfortable but potent subjects as romance, commitment, desire, class, and sex, of course.

Lust Stories is a step in the right direction. This is the main reason I’m going to refrain from stating my favourite short, because I feel it’ll be a premature opinion. One must watch Lust Stories, dreamily, a couple of more times to fully soak it in. The stories may not have worked as longer features, because that would reveal the risk of over-analysing and forcing a story to fit within the three-act structure. Lust Stories is stitched together beautifully, like starkly different pieces of the same fabric. It is evocative, beautiful, visceral and alluring.