By Neber Haque, Big Bollywood Buffs
When I first moved to London I was new, vulnerable, and desperately homesick. At a certain age making friends becomes almost impossible so like many migrants I turned to dating apps, not really looking for a date but just for human connection. Somewhere in that search I was introduced to a secret desi swingers club.
Before I walked through that door I assumed this was a white thing. I had never imagined brown people in those spaces. It took me a long time to process what I saw. Not because of the acts themselves but because of what it meant. That desire does not belong to any culture. That repression does not eliminate longing. It just drives it underground. I did not expect to think about that night while watching Lust Stories 3. But when Konkona Sen Sharma’s character casually suggests swapping partners with her best friend and colleague the memory came back immediately. Not with shame. With recognition. That is the power of this franchise. It finds you in places you thought you had locked away.
Vikramaditya Motwane: Story One
I first encountered Vikramaditya Motwane sixteen years ago when I was a fifteen year old boy about to finish college. Udaan hit me in a way I could not explain then and still struggle to explain now. I was not a film student. I knew nothing about cinema. But something in Rohan’s desperate need to run away from everything that was suffocating him reached inside me and pulled. Maybe because I wanted to run too. Maybe because I did not have his courage. That is another story.
What I know is that when Motwane’s name appears on a project I sit forward.
His segment in Lust Stories 3 reminded me exactly why. Konkona Sen Sharma and Radhika Apte together in one frame is not just casting. It is a declaration. Two of the boldest, most uncompromising actresses in Indian cinema placed together and asked to show jealousy, desire, and delusion without a single line of dialogue that gives the game away.
What they do here is rare. Jealousy moves across their eyes like weather. The transition between delusion and reality is so seamless that you are never entirely sure which world you are in. The editing, colour grading, and pacing operate with remarkable precision. Motwane at his most controlled and most felt at the same time.
Kiran Rao: Story Two
Kiran Rao already proved herself with Laapataa Ladies. Her eye for detail, her patience with a scene, her refusal to rush what needs to breathe are all present here in full force.
Her segment is the one that surprised me most. Not because of what it shows but because of what it is really saying underneath.
Twin brothers. Physical intimacy. The same woman. On the surface it reads as a lust story. But the more I sat with it the more I realised Kiran Rao is not really making a film about desire at all. She is making a film about greed. The twins do not want the woman. They want what the other one has. The intimacy is almost incidental. It is the possession that drives them. The need to have what belongs to someone else even when that someone else shares your own face.
That is a more uncomfortable observation than anything explicit could be. And Kiran Rao makes it without ever announcing it. You feel it before you understand it.
Gurfateh Pirzada genuinely surprised me here. After watching him in Call Me Bae I had filed him away as another charming face filling a slot. In this segment he showed me something else entirely. There is real potential in him. He just needs the right director to walk him through it. Kiran Rao clearly knew how to do that.
Sana Thampi is good. But at times her performance does not fully convince as someone who has built a livelihood through this profession. There is a slight mismatch between the character’s background and the ease of her physicality. A minor disconnect in an otherwise carefully constructed world.
Shakun Batra: Story Three
Shakun Batra is one of those directors whose filmography does not follow a straight line. Ek Main Aur Ekk Tu, Kapoor and Sons, Gehraiyaan. Each one feels like it was made by someone different. That is not inconsistency. That is range. And range is rare.
His segment is the one that made me think the longest after the credits rolled.
Most stories about lust in Indian cinema are really stories about protecting something. A long marriage. A family. A reputation. The lust is the threat and the marriage is the thing worth saving.
Shakun Batra flips it completely. He shows us a short marriage. Young. Raw. Full of lust. And then quietly asks whether lust alone is enough to hold two people together. The answer is uncomfortable because it is honest. Lust without the other things eventually burns itself out. But the other things without lust quietly suffocate you instead.
The balance between the two is where a real relationship lives. And Shakun Batra finds that balance not by explaining it but by showing you both extremes and letting you feel the gap between them.
He does not tell you what to think. He just rearranges the furniture until you see the room differently.
Vishal Bhardwaj: Story Four
I will be honest with you. I do not have the audacity to critique Vishal Bhardwaj. I watch his films the way a student reads a textbook. Slowly. Carefully. Knowing that whatever I miss the first time was intentional and worth finding on the second.
His segment in Lust Stories 3 flew past my heart before I could catch it. Maybe I do not yet have the capacity to fully receive what he was offering. Maybe some filmmakers require a version of you that you have not become yet.
What I did feel was this. The sensation of reading something forbidden as a teenager. That specific guilt of holding a book you were not supposed to have, reading words that made your pulse quicken, knowing that the thrill and the shame were the same thing wearing different clothes. The feeling that control had quietly left your hands and gone somewhere else entirely and that you were not entirely unhappy about that.
Whether that is what Bhardwaj intended I cannot say with certainty. What I can say is that he made me feel something I had buried a long time ago. And a filmmaker who can do that without you fully understanding how deserves more than criticism.
He deserves a second watch. And then a third.
What the Four Stories Say Together
The most quietly brilliant thing about Lust Stories 3 is how the four segments are stitched together. This is not four separate films playing back to back. The characters bleed into each other. Konkona gets her nails done by Sana Thampi’s character and the second story begins. Gurfateh Pirzada appears across stories without it ever feeling forced. The transitions are seamless in the way that only deliberate, careful craft can achieve.
What this structure is really saying is something no single segment could say alone. That desire is not an event. It is a continuum. It moves through people and spaces and relationships without asking permission. It connects strangers. It complicates friendships. It disguises itself as greed, as jealousy, as forbidden books, as a partner swap suggested over drinks.
We are all in each other’s stories whether we know it or not. And lust, in all its contradictory, uncomfortable, deeply human forms is often the thread that connects us.
The Verdict 
Lust Stories 3 is the most mature chapter of the franchise yet. Not because it is more explicit but because it is more honest. Four directors. Four completely different stories. One conversation that Indian cinema has been trying to have with itself for decades. It does not always land perfectly but when it does it hits somewhere you did not know was still tender.
Lust Stories 3 is brave, ambitious, and worth every minute. But if I am being honest the first two chapters still hold something this one has not quite reached yet. Maybe that is the nature of desire itself. The first time always leaves the deepest mark.
⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4 out of 5