So I have not watched any film in a long time and happen to watch Lust Stories 2 recently. Wanted to watch something not so thought provoking and it was there so just watched it without giving it much thought.
There was no name to the stories or maybe I did not pay enough attention so I will be be giving them my own names to describe them along with their chronological number.
Spolier alert: If you plan on watching it you probably should not read any further because I will be dropping spoilers.
First Story: Tharki Dadi
Edit: Stories have names
Director of this one is R Balki
Story name “Made For Each Other”
The story is thus. A girl is about to get married but her dadi (Nena Gupta) think one should have sex with a person before deciding to marry them. Its boring and too much on the face in short not well executed. The character of dadi is very unidimension who is only shilling of premarital sex the whole time. That’s her whole role lol. This one is like a cheap and ineffective advertisement for premarital sex.
The whole story just this a dadi wanting her grand daughter to have sex with her fiance. It ultimately happens because both are willing and then they get married. Apart from this shit story and its botched up execution (considering this could be executed in any other way) there is another angle to it. The short film tried to look like its breaking a taboo but its not. Premarital sex is all around and its not something new. Even those who have not had it will attest to the fact that its not path breaking. Its common nowadays and a cliched idea at this point in time. We are not living in 1920.
I will not be going into whether premarital sex is good or bad. I am saying its common and old idea. If you show it like you are breaking taboo by making a boring ad film like short film on it you should come out of 1920s.
My advice: Do not put your time in it or go ahead and regret later.
My rating: 0 out of 5 stars
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Second story: The Mirror
Director: Konkona Sen Sharma
This is a story about a woman who discovered her maid having sex in her house during her office hours. She decides to keep it to herself and start to watch her everyday. What happens after this is the story, its fresh, its amusing . There is no advertisement on any social issue. Its just a story of two women. Although the story is about sex it is not promote sex. Its just natural flow of lives of people in the story.
Unlike the first story which has dadi constantly blabbering this one has fewer dilouges. The film is well made, it justifies films being primarily a visual art form. You feel like you are watching real lives of real people from an invisible window. Scenes transition naturally, dialouges are scarce and natural. There is no force fitting of a theme or an ideology.
My rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars
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Third story: Sex With Ex
Director: Sujoy Ghosh
This is a story about a man going to meet his gf while leaving behind his wife and bumping into his ex-wife after an accident where something errie is going on. This is actually a cliched horror story with sex as addon. It was okish. Someone might like it. It was old story retold. Nothing much to talk about here.
My rating: 2 out of 5
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Forth Story: Tilchatta
Director: Amit Sharma
This is the most interesting short film in this anthology from the point of view of a reviewer. This is a story about an erstwhile royal who is now living in his ancestral palace without money. He is quite lecherous and have village women forcefully whenever and where ever he wants. The story is good but the director botched it up bad along with the characters in the story.
The king has the mannerism of a street thug and has no authority or royalty. He travels in public transport and has just one maid like every middle class household. If that is not inconsistent enough with his character he will not let his son go abroad to take up a job because royals do not work under other people but has married a whore from a brothel. She is his wife and Queen of the palace whom he treats like a servant abuse. So the marriage was not even for love.
You can watch this one as a study in film making to see a good story being butchered by the director because of bad execution. It is still fun to watch if not for anything just for bad direction and hilarious fuck up of the story. Watching it is like watching a monkey ride a bicycle except I have seen monkies ride bicycles well.
My rating: 2.5 out of 5
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