‘Karan Johar made career-best film in Lust Stories’ with Kiara, Vicky: Vishal Bhardwaj

Vishal Bhardwaj feels Karan Johar made his career-best film for Lust Stories.

Lust Stories, the International Emmy Award-nominated anthology, returns for its third edition to Netflix India this Friday on September 18. Lust Stories 3, like the first two instalments, boasts of a wide range of four directors — Vikramaditya Motwane, Kiran Rao, Shakun Batra, and Vishal Bhardwaj. In an exclusive interview with SCREEN, the four directors picked their favourite segment from the previous two editions of the anthology — and it turned out to be a tie.

Karan Johar – Lust Stories 1

“Karan Johar made his career’s best film in Lust Stories,” says Vishal. “I really loved Kiara Advani’s performance. And Vicky (Kushal) is so good! But directorially, it’s a very strong film.” Karan’s segment in the first edition of Lust Stories, which released in 2018, revolved around a newly-married small-town couple, played by Kiara and Vicky Kaushal, where the wife is disappointed that her husband doesn’t slow himself down to please her sexually.

Interestingly, Vishal’s segment in Lust Stories 3 also takes that idea forward, in a completely new setting. Aditi Rao Hydari’s character, a literature professor in Hyderabad of the late 1980s, resorts to reading and writing erotica because her homeopathic doctor-husband (Siddharth) doesn’t know how to satiate a woman in bed. “Phatpahti ko taiyyar kar rahe jaise begum ko bhi karva na” (Fix the wife like you’re fixing your bike), she says in the trailer when her husband wipes his motorcycle clean.

Shakun Batra also chose Karan’s segment as his favourite Lust Stories film. Having directed three films for his banner Dharma Productions — Ek Main Aur Ekk Tu (2012), Kapoor & Sons (2016), and Gehraiyaan (2022) — Shakun also had the luxury of close proximity with Karan, who narrated the film to him in his trademark animated fashion. “Even when I’d heard the narration, I thought it was so funny the way he narrated it,” he said. The high point in Karan’s segment was when Kiara’s character uses a vibrator to get orgasm, with the crescendo of the title track of Karan’s 2001 blockbuster family drama Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham blasting in the background.

Konkona Sen Sharma – The Mirror – Lust Stories 2

The other two filmmakers from Lust Stories 3 picked The Mirror, the critically acclaimed segment directed by Konkona Sen Sharma in the second instalment, which released in 2023. “I actually loved Koko’s film. It was so beautifully done. It was funny and uncomfortable,” said Kiran Rao, adding, “Not just lust, but there were so many other things like class woven in. It was so complex for a short film, and so touching. The end was so perfect. I really loved it.”

The Mirror revolved around an upper-class Mumbai woman (Tillotama Shome) discovering her domestic help (Amruta Subhash) having sex inside her apartment in her absence. She finds herself drawn to watching her, and vice-versa, before they end up confronting each other aggressively in order to avoid losing face. Konkona also features in Lust Stories 3, but this time as an actor, in the segment directed by Vikramaditya Motwane, alongside Radhika Apte, Vijay Varma, and Abhishek Banerjee.

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“In fact, watching Koko’s Lust Stories episode from the previous one was actually the reason why I was so keen to do this. What she did on that episode was phenomenal! She just raised the level of the anthology incredibly. I’ve worked with Radhika (in Sacred Games) before, but never worked with Koko. So, it’s been a dream to work with her,” said Motwane.