Lust Stories Review – Lust Stories is a Hindi anthology film released in 2018. After the successful anthology of Bombay Talkies in 2013, directors Karan Johar, Anurag Kashyap, Zoya Akthar and Dibankar Banerjee come together yet again to create this new anthology series that explores the theme of lust.
The striking difference in these stories is that lust is explored from a women’s perspective. Each of the stories is bold and the one’s filmmakers dare to deal it in full-length scripts. This one is also in line with the theme of Lipstick under my Bhurka Kudos to the filmmakers to come up such a theme and make a movie around it. The film doesn’t miss a chance to poke fun at the taboo surrounding physical relationship and Indian upbringing. The lead ladies of the stories Radhika Apte, Bhumi Pednekar, Manisha Koirala, Neha Dhupia and Kiara Advani have portrayed their roles very well.
This time Karan Johar goes last and in fact, the order of the films have been reversed in terms of its directors to that of Bombay Talkies. This is probably the second movie made by Karan Johar that I loved after the short film in Bombay Talkies, it brings out the best in him. Without giving a spoiler of plots I wanted to touch upon the few areas that impressed me very much. Anurag has explored a monologue to jump the scenes, he has remained within the three walls of the film space and the monologue of Radhika Apte keeps it under her personal space where she can speak her mind freely. Zoya’s film has Bhumi Pednekar give out a very compelling performance without uttering a dialogue for most parts. She has shown that a normal situation can be made thrilling if you connect the audience to an emotion. Dibankar Banerjee has told many a thing without them being actually said between his characters. Karan Johar has explored one of the most less spoken about topics in a quick-witted manner but still gets his message very clear.
All the situations in the movies are like you hope it doesn’t happen and it happens.
High Points: 4 great directors coming together to make an anthology, exploring the concept of lust from a women’s perspective, the performance of the lead characters.
Low Points: Hardly any
Overall Lust Stories is an anthology that explores areas very less explored in Indian Cinema and does make a statement that would make you think.
The movie is rated 13+ and is available only on Netflix.
For the past few days, the movie Udta Punjab produced by Anurag Kashyap is trending for the reason that it is being demanded to make unreasonable cuts by the censor board. Well, Mr. Kashyap said it is his fight and he would fight for it. I sincerely hope he wins. In this week’s Friday Fundas, I would like to highlight how the legendary director Alfred Hitchcock had constantly challenged the censor board in many ridiculous ways, broke many of their rules and in effect changed the idea of Censorship.
Out of the many instances, two of Hitchcock’s movies are still very popular for the kind of controversies they evoked with the Censorship. Notorious released in 1946 starred Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman. The signature scene in the movie is the kissing scene between Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman. Hitchcock wanted to shoot a two and half minute kissing scene. But the censor board at that time allowed only three seconds long kissing scene. In order to achieve what he wanted, he had interrupted the scene every three seconds to pass the movie through the three-second rule in the production code.
The movie Psycho which he had made in 1960 evoked more controversies right from the production stage. You could watch the movie Hitchcock or read the book “Alfred Hitchcock and the making of Psycho” written by Stephen Rebello to learn more about it. Out of the many controversial scenes, there was a scene in which the toilet is shown with visible notes being flushed. Till that date, none of the movies had shown a toilet in the movie and censor board initially rejected it and eventually had to give in as there was hardly any logic behind it. The shower scene is the money shot for the movie. Hitchcock knew he would be ridiculed by the censor board. So he had deliberately made it more violent so that he had negotiated with the board to arrive at the output he wanted. The board also had objection over the opening scene of the movie. He negotiated with them that he would change the scene and reshoot it provided they allow him to keep the shower scene. He also had said he would reshoot with the censor board members on the set under their advice. As they did not turn up for the reshoot the scene remained.
Post the release of Psycho the censor board was never the same again. The movie relaxed many of the censorship rules giving more freedom to the filmmakers.
Hope you liked this article. Leave your comments and thoughts below. In case you are interested, you can read more articles from Friday Fundas section.
This week my facebook wall was filled with funny and sarcastic criticism about the recent Tamil movie Puli. There have been really creative meme’s posted which were definitely rib-tickling and became coffee table conversations and Whatsapp forwards. Equally there has been my friends in the movie industry who felt sad that a creation after so much of hard work is being criticised heavily without any regards to the effort the makers have put it.
In this week’s “Friday Fundas” I decided to share my opinions about the behavior and my humble thoughts on whether to fight it or use it to the strength.
Criticism is not a new phenomenon. It has been in practice for ages. It is like an opposition party in a democratic government. Where the critic’s opinions are targeted to shape the quality of the content. Recollecting one of literature discussions we were having one of them had raised a point that a creation doesn’t belong to the writer once it is published. And the readers have complete rights on expressing their views about it.
While on the other had the writers have a different take on it. Writer/Director Brad Bird has expressed his angst against the critics in the movie Ratatouille in the words of the character Anton Ego as below
“In many ways, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read. But the bitter truth we critics must face, is that in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is probably more meaningful than our criticism designating it so. But there are times when a critic truly risks something, and that is in the discovery and defense of the new. The world is often unkind to new talent, new creations, the new needs friends.”
And the following scene from the movie Birdman takes a hit at critics trying define what the artist needs to do
They are two sides of the same coin. One needs to exist for the existence of the other. They will shake hands and embrace each other when there is agreement and turn their backs to each other when there is disagreement.
Off late with the advent of social media the amount of criticism a works get has dramatically increased. When a movie is good it is heavily praised and when it is bad it is heavily trolled. In either case it definitely affects the performance of the movie in the theaters.
Social Media has become a necessary evil in promoting products. It has provided a great tool for the movie producers to reach their audience like never before. Compared to the era when weekly magazine articles were the only medium to promote the content now it has become much more easier to take the content to the audience to their personal mobile phones. Also they have the option to hear back from them. While this is powerful it also opens a pandora box of hearing non-favorable comments as well.
Assuming that the reviewers on the social media will become ethical and write responsibly is a wild goose chase. But they could be leveraged to the strength of the promotion. If the source content is good it will definitely get a majority of positive reviews than negative reviews. For instance movies like Kaaka muttai and Maya received very positive reviews which helped the movie while movies like Anjaan, Puli suffered from the negative reviews. More hype the movie creates before the release the more it is going to be reviewed. There is no secret formula for an optimum amount of promotion one could do.
Instead of spending too much energy on worrying about the reviews if the makers invest time in producing quality content then the chance of getting positive word is much more. Now one could argue that no one sets out to make a bad movie. But there certain patterns behind a movie that doesn’t work. One of the major pattern which I believe the Indian movies suffer is screen writing. In India most of the movies are being written and directed by the same person. This is a very diffcult job to do. Unless the director is very talented like Christopher Nolan, Tarantino, Anurag Kashyap, S.S Rajamouli or Vishal Bharadwaj who can write entertaining scripts and also direct good content the quality of the content suffers. In the Hollywood most of the movies have a well established writing department. Or the content is made from literature that is already published. It took Danny Boyle to create a movie based on the book Q&A and not for any Indian director. Spielberg has made movies based on books written by popular authors. His skill has been in directing movies and he does that well. This has enabled Spielberg to work on multiple projects simultaneously. Director Shankar and Maniratnam heavily relied on writers like Sujatha to create screenplay which worked well. Screenplay is the soul of the movie and if you have a great screenplay the movie would work. Increased production quality makes the movie more appealing to a wider level of audience. But if the screenplay is bad the movie would not work. I hope in the future we have the culture of directors more open to work on someone else’s script.
A good movie would work well with the audience and thereby attract more positive comments from people. There has been no movie which has worked for every one. There would be always lovers and haters for the movie. At the end of the day it matters whose count is larger.
Movie makers should stop worrying about the negative comments and concentrate on building a quality movie and believe in it, it will be healthy for Cinema.
Hasee Toh Phasee – is a Hindi romance drama released in 2014. Nikhil wants to a lead a life with guarantee from his job, to the house and his girlfriend. During the preparation for his wedding he gets in touch with the sister of his fiancee who is a drug addict and chooses to live life spontaneously. Does this change his life is the rest of the plot.
Karan Johar and Anurag Kashyap producing a movie jointly raised some interesting questions if it is going to be a fun fair with song and dance or some serious dark drama. It was more of the former. This is one of the movies which has not been positioned very well. The title and promos had set the expectations for a romantic comedy but it ends up being a bit of satire on Indian wedding, bit of old school romantic drama in the end leaves you a bit confused as are the lead characters in the movie. There are parts of the movie which are interesting including the performance of Parineeti Chopra, the chemistry between the lead pair. But this isn’t sufficient to make it a overall exciting package. You might consider to watch it once when played on TV.
That Day After Everyday – is a short Film by Anurag Kashyap released in 2013. The movie is a strong take on eve-teasing and molestation in the society. The movie instills confidence and empowers women to fight against these issues bravely. A must watch for every one. Hats off to Anurag Kashyap for making such a wonderful movie!
