Konkona Sensharma is having a bit of an anthology moment. After her searing performance in Geeli Pucchi — part of the 2021 anthology Ajeeb Daastaans — the actor takes centre stage, this time as director, in another Netflix anthology. Lust Stories 2, the sophomore instalment in the four-in-one story format that captures carnal pleasure complicated by matters of the heart and beyond, has, as has almost become a norm in anthology storytelling, only one standout story. That belongs to Konkona.
Titled The Mirror, which describes both the means for the voyeurism that forms the short’s premise as well as a deeper look into societal disparity, this is an unconventional, and ultimately, deeply satisfying piece of writing-directing-acting that unusually but effectively combines class with desire. Konkona — whose directorial prowess was proved beyond doubt in her feature directorial debut A Death in the Gunj a few years ago — tells the story of two women, with one’s unfettered sexual life becoming the means for the other to satisfy her own unfulfilled desires. Without one laying even a finger on the other.
Boss lady Isheeta (Tillotama Shome) is mortified when a migraine attack forces her to land at home one afternoon and find her trusted domestic help Seema (Amruta Subhash) engaging in deeply passionate sex on Isheeta’s bed. Enraged at first, Isheeta figures out that the lack of space and privacy in their home makes Seema and her husband use her apartment every afternoon for sex. The more she thinks about that moment, the more Isheeta realises the vacuum in her own (absent) sex life. Instead of sacking Seema, she starts slipping secretly into her own apartment every afternoon, her voyeuristic pleasure at observing Seema ‘at work’ ultimately enabling her to partially fulfil her own carnal desires.
A class apart (pun unintended) from the rest, this short explores female desire and the complications of stratum, with Tillotama and Amruta, both consummate actors, elevating the already rich material written by Konkona and Pooja Tolani. In tone and treatment, The Mirror has shades of Zoya Akhtar’s short from the first instalment, but the finesse with which Konkona directs even the awkward scenes demands that this short be viewed. The Mirror is most in sync with the ethos of Lust Stories, making sex messy and pleasurable, but also a mirror into one’s moods and motivations, which are equally messy and often pleasurable.
The case with the other three shorts, however, is more miss than hit. Tilchatta, directed by Badhaai Ho maker Amit Ravindernath Sharma, is perhaps the most cohesive after Konkona’s, with Kajol being the marquee name in the cast. But the short, meaning ‘cockroach’, is well and truly owned by Kumud Mishra, who turns in a superlative act as a repulsive over-sexed royal, whose centuries-old mansion is falling to ruins, with his wife (played by Kajol) being at the receiving end of his frustration. The camerawork in Tilchitta is beautifully atmospheric, Kajol is hauntingly mysterious and the short builds up to a delicious crescendo, but doesn’t achieve the storytelling apex that it promised. Still, it more or less gets the memo and remains watchable for the most part.
The same can’t be said about the other two shorts. Here is a template which is ripe for storytelling, enabling its makers to spin stories about human vice and virtue (more of the former, of course) as the players in each segment navigate through a terrain which provides opportunity for sexual awakening and agency, even as it explicitly, and necessarily, touches upon carnal abuse. In a format like this, a variety of human traits and emotions — ugly, bad, good, in that order — have the perfect platform to make themselves seen and heard.The first instalment may not have broken new ground in terms of storytelling and innovation, but quite a few bits of it remain memorable, particularly that scene of Kiara Advani orgasming endlessly in front of her in-laws with a vibrator stuck inside her, in Karan Johar’s segment. Dibakar Banerjee’s mature take on relationships — with Manisha Koirala playing a woman suddenly gaining agency when her husband discovers she is having an affair with his best friend — was the best of the lot.
In this instalment, Sujoy Ghosh brings in a thriller touch to Sex with the Ex, which could well be the title of any recent Vijay Varma outing. Vijay plays Vijay, dressed as a certain Vijay Varma from Deewaar, with Sujoy doffing a hat to everything retro, from Vijay’s vintage ride to Kumar Sanu’s Jab koi baat bigad jaaye. A chance encounter with his ex-wife (Tamannaah Bhatia), given up for dead a decade ago, results in the two engaging in torrid sex with mention of murder thrown in. Ghosh attempts to pull the carpet from under the feet of the viewer with an unexpected climax but anyone on a healthy diet of M. Night Shyamalan will spot the twist a mile away. The only gain from this short is that Vijay and Tamannaah became a couple soon after.
The weakest segment belongs to R. Balki, who is taking his penchant for out-of-the-box too far. In his Made for Each Other, a septuagenarian daadi, played by Neena Gupta, lectures her granddaughter on the necessity of ‘test-driving’ her fiance’s (Angad Bedi) skills in bed before taking the plunge. Over-precocious grandmothers are now a Bolly staple — Kamlesh Gill has made a career out of it — but this short, which uses code words like ‘Mount Fuji’ to describe rapturous orgasming, ends up feeling too wannabe and wordy.
