Lust Stories has always been about more than lust itself. Behind the sex, temptation and forbidden looks, the anthology has explored the complicated inner conflicts people experience when desire refuses to fit neatly into ideas of right and wrong. Its strongest stories have occupied that grey area, where morality becomes blurred, decisions are complicated and the journey is often more important than the destination.
That is also what makes Lust Stories 3 somewhat underwhelming. When the character arcs become easy to predict and the people at the centre of the stories lack depth, the anthology loses the uncertainty that once made it compelling. The intention was always to travel alongside these characters through their desires and reach a point where it becomes difficult to decide who is right or wrong. The eventual decisions do not necessarily need to be perfectly logical, but the journey should make the audience feel that it was worthwhile.
Lust Stories 3 features four stories directed by Vikramaditya Motwane, Kiran Rao, Shakun Batra and Vishal Bhardwaj. Each filmmaker brings their recognisable cinematic style, and while all four explore desire, intimacy and the lives people build around them, Bhardwaj’s segment comes across as the most layered, mature and satisfying.
Vikramaditya Motwane's story
Motwane’s segment stars Konkona Sen Sharma and Radhika Apte as women in their 40s who are attempting to bring excitement back into marriages that have gradually become devoid of lust. Their unusual solution is to exchange partners.
Motwane keeps the camera firmly rooted in the female perspective, refusing to treat the women’s desires as insignificant simply because they are married, middle-aged mothers. Their friendship, personal ambitions and renewed focus on themselves make their decision appear less impulsive and more like an effort to recover a part of their identities that domestic life has slowly taken away.
However, just as the audience begins getting invested in their world, the story takes an uncomfortable turn, though not necessarily one that proves particularly effective.
Konkona and Radhika are excellent as women attempting to balance motherhood, marriage and personal desire without losing their individuality. Vijay Varma, however, repeatedly commands attention whenever he appears. His performance has a wonderful restraint, with the actor confidently holding a scene without needing to do too much. His chemistry with both women feels natural rather than forced.
Sadly, the uneven ending prevents the film from fully capitalising on these strengths. The friendship between the women, arguably the most engaging and emotionally compelling aspect of the story, fades into the background when it should have become more important. What is left is a fairly conventional interpretation of what it means to emerge victorious.
Kiran Rao's story
Kiran Rao’s segment shifts to Mumbai and focuses on people who come to the city carrying ambitions much bigger than their circumstances. Gurfateh Pirzada and Sana Thampi play Karan and Lisa, two young people struggling to make ends meet while hoping their difficult present will eventually lead to something better.
Karan works as a pizza delivery rider while also dealing drugs, meaning the pizza box carries more than just food. Lisa is a nail artist and one of the many young people who move to Mumbai from different parts of India in search of a better life.
In this world, money becomes a universal language. Karan and Lisa develop an appealing chemistry, and for some time Rao succeeds in making their small world of possibilities feel believable. But once the audience begins hoping things will work out for them, the twists start appearing at moments that are largely predictable.
The central idea is intriguing: lust can sometimes function as a disguise, offering the illusion of immediate pleasure and briefly making an uncertain existence seem more bearable, while taking attention away from larger ambitions. Rao displays a strong command of visual composition and a clear understanding of the city. However, the writing does not have enough depth to match the world the anthology has established. The story looks and feels like Lust Stories, but lacks the emotional complexity that has traditionally defined the series.
Shakun Batra's story
Shakun Batra’s segment revolves around Varun and Sailee, a young married couple played by Ali Fazal and Radhika Madan. They appear to have lost the ability to communicate with each other except through sex. Their relationship is filled with arguments and growing resentment, with intimacy providing the only moments when the constant conflict comes to a halt.
Eventually, the repeated fights become so draining that ending the marriage seems to be the only possible escape. The film does, however, struggle with how quickly the characters appear to reach that decision, particularly in a country where leaving a marriage is rarely as straightforward as simply choosing to do so.
Still, Batra understands an important truth about relationships: the most painful stories are often not extraordinary ones, but those that feel disturbingly familiar.
You may have encountered someone like Varun. You may recognise a Sailee. You may have seen two people gradually transform their relationship into a battleground and later wondered when they stopped seeing themselves as being on the same side. That familiarity becomes the strongest quality of the segment.
Fazal and Madan give restrained performances. Their intimate scenes are visually striking, but the filmmaking also explains why those moments are significant. Even before the film explicitly establishes that sex is their method of communicating, the audience can observe it. During those moments, their arguments stop, the surrounding noise disappears and they seem genuinely alive.
Batra also portrays the suffocating effect of traditional expectations surrounding marriage. Parents often view marriage as an obligation, a responsibility and something that must simply be endured and completed. An elevator sequence, in particular, subtly conveys the couple’s deep emotional exhaustion.
The story itself may be familiar, but Batra knows how to make that familiarity hurt.
Vishal Bhardwaj's story
Vishal Bhardwaj’s segment finally provides Lust Stories 3 with much of the depth and complexity promised by the anthology.
Set in what appears to be Hyderabad during the 1980s, the story features Aditi Rao Hydari and Siddharth as Saira and Badru, a married couple who have settled into a predictable pattern of intimacy every Friday.
Their marriage functions smoothly until Saira begins seeking something more — greater curiosity, deeper pleasure, intellectual stimulation and a stronger sense of herself.
Saira is an English teacher who grew up reading writers such as Ismat Chughtai and Saadat Hasan Manto. When her students give her an erotic book, it sparks something within her. For the first time, she encounters a vocabulary for desires she may have experienced but never fully understood.
She then takes an even more unconventional step and begins writing erotica herself.
Bhardwaj’s choice to set the story in the 1980s becomes particularly meaningful at this point. Saira is not only challenging the patriarchy surrounding her but also questioning the beliefs she has absorbed herself. Can a woman read about sex? Can she write about it? And, perhaps most importantly, can she openly acknowledge that she enjoys it?
What might her husband think? How would society react? And what happens when a woman stops feeling ashamed of her own desires?
Bhardwaj presents these questions quietly, allowing them to emerge naturally within the household instead of turning them into overt declarations. The story is richly atmospheric, supported by the chemistry between Aditi Rao Hydari and Siddharth. Red curtains, velvet bedsheets and Hyderabad’s grand havelis fill the frame, making desire feel physical and almost within reach.
The visual beauty serves a purpose, becoming part of Saira’s personal awakening rather than existing merely as decoration.
Gajraj Rao, despite having relatively little conventional dialogue, makes a strong impression as Saira’s progressive father-in-law. Through his character, Bhardwaj also makes one of the film’s most understated observations: a woman’s value within marriage does not have to be defined by motherhood. She can pursue education, work, establish her own identity, complete a PhD and have a life of her own before being expected to create one for somebody else.
By the time the film reaches its climax, it becomes clear that sex was never really its central concern. The deeper theme is permission — the freedom to want, imagine and explore a part of oneself that society has repeatedly instructed women to conceal.
Lust Stories 3 ultimately does not have the impact one might expect given its premise and its impressive collection of filmmakers. There are genuinely beautiful moments, perceptive observations and performances that stay with the viewer, but the stories do not consistently deliver the moral uncertainty and emotional resonance that made the earlier instalments so effective.
Even so, all four filmmakers make an effort to return to the idea of the female gaze in their own ways. Women are presented not simply as objects of desire but as individuals who experience desire themselves — complicated, contradictory, sometimes selfish and frequently uncertain about what they want until they give themselves permission to pursue it.
The difficulty is that not every story knows how to handle that freedom. Some introduce desire only to eventually fall back on predictable conclusions. Others treat a twist as though it were a revelation. Bhardwaj’s story, however, recognises that the most compelling part of lust is not the physical act, but the transformation that occurs when a person stops pretending that desire does not exist.
Lust Stories 3 is currently streaming on Netflix.
