Perfect cast and a good story

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

An anthology film directed by some of the best directors in the Hindi film industry, dealing with the complex sexual and relationship dynamics in this diverse country called India.All four movies were great. Karan Johar brought a much needed lighter vibe to the rather bleak ensemble. The best segment was the Zoya Akhtar one with the character played by Bhumi Pednekar who underplayed it to perfection. The first segment with Radhika Apte was the second best which shows a young married woman grappling with the sexual freedom in modern India. Karan Johar segment was the third best about a newly married middle class couple discovering each other's sexual needs. I'll rate the Dibakar Banerjee segment as the weakest probably because it's trying to show the tangle couples get into after several years of marriage with no way out. I thought it was too on the nose and needed better handling.

4 top notch directors, not so well known actors but good performances, low on budget but very well made shorts, loved them al!

A since the turn of the century, there have been quite a few mainstream anthology films in Bollywood. One of them was Bombay Talkies that was released around Bollywood's centenary year, directed by 4 mainstream directors. The same directors come back together to deliver 'Lust Stories'. While that was pretty much a compilation of stories from different parts of Mumbai, this a step ahead trying to tie stories based on an emotion. Though we did have movies from RGV camp like Darna Manaa Hai and Darna Zaroori Hai, that had Horror as the binding theme, and among them only Darna Zaroori hai had stories from multiple directors, but an attempt like this is a rarity in general. So it was good to see an attempt to bring together different director's take on an emotion, that too one which is understood pretty linearly, but has complicated impact on us as beings.What I find interesting is that while the stories are not connected to each other, the directors chose to not give a name to their stories. So let's explore these segments further.The first story by Anurag Kashyap, shows a college lecturer Kalandi, who has gone through her adolescence without having a fling and is married to someone much older than her and has had more than his share of those. She is encouraged by her husband to be open to explore beyond her marriage and have more stories to say about her life. So to achieve that, she utilizes her authority to become intimate with a student, Tejas. She is trying to be promiscuous, but her behavior is not driven by lust as it is with others. Thus, she can't just have a fling with Tejas without being utterly possessive about him and ends up stalking him, while making her attempts pretty obvious. She realizes her irrationality as she tries to be hopelessly hopeful of being something that she is not, lustful. It was a great script helped by a couple of beautiful songs by Amit Trivedi. Wonderful take on the emotion, or on trying to feign it.Second segment by Zoya is certainly a surprise offering from her. She breaks away her mold to tell the story of Sudha, a household maid of a middle class bachelor Ajit, who is physically intimate with him. Amidst the mundane chores of daily life, she gets her spark from these moments, something she probably looks forward to. Much of the screen time shows her mental state as she crumbles within while holding her composure, assisting in hosting the family of the girl that is going to marry Ajit. In her silence, she curses herself for harboring any feelings of comfort and security, while having always known that this relationship was only defined by Ajit's lust. I think the last scene is the defining moment where she accepts she can't break away from her fate, and is content to accept whatever she was able to get from her relationship that was possible only because of lust. Kudos! to Bhumi, for her portrayal of Sudha.The third segment by Dibakar is a mature take on how lust and other circumstances define how we choose our relationships, which in turn define our lives. As we face existential questions in our lives, we tend to look beyond the quest for excitement that our lust drives and assess how to manage it viz-a-viz our other aspirations in life. While coming of age stories show emancipation through acceptance of the emotion, this one shows emancipation through being able to look beyond it. It is an attempt to put into 30 minutes what could have been a great 2 hours film, thanks to many layers that it unfolds. This brevity snatches the opportunity for character development, leaving a lot to be conveyed through unspoken words. While it tackles the emotion with maximum depth, it was probably not mean for depiction through this medium.The fourth segment by K.Jo has the trademark style of dharma productions written all over it. It is straightforward and loud in tackling the subject, has Neha Dhupia and Kiara Advani driving up the oomph factor in the way they dress up and carry themselves. There isn't much creativity in the depiction of a newlywed wife that wants to satisfy her libido, a naive husband that is oblivious to it and a society that thinks lowly of such urges and a funny scene, adapted from 'The Ugly Truth', incorporated for entertainment. A superficial take on the subject, packaging the obvious connotations that one would attach to the emotion in general conversations in our society.All in all a great attempt to piece together an anthology film, on an emotion that is often depicted with corrupt connotations and vulgarity, thanks to its attachment to one verb that I was able to avoid throughout this review, 'Sex'.

4 stories of flawed Indian women trying to live their life to the fullest in the patriarchal society that never let them be. Anurag kashyap's segment was pretty good with an amazing performance from Radhike Apte who also wrote it. It was a hilarious segment with her character who's always ranting one thing and doing the opposite to make things complicated, then there's the teacher student relationship in the mix. Zoya Akthar's segment captured the micro expressions of Bhumi Pednekar to showcase the exploitation of the lower class servants, something that has been used many times in Indian cinema but still the performance and the direction makes it fresh. Dibakar Banarjee's segment is my favourite among the lot which portrays the complex relationships amid a failing but not breaking marriage and the friendship that gets in the line. Karan Johar made his segment breaking his own methods used for years and making fun of his old films to show how stupid and oppressive the ideal families shown in his old films are really.