Lust Stories, The Second Season Is  Saucy Scintillating & Seductive

Lust Stories 2(Netflix)

Rating: *** ½

Lost in  lust,  or perhaps the hit lust…such mischievous descriptions spring to mind as we watch an extremely sexual Grandma in Balki’s story played by Neena Gupta about whom her screen-son Ayushman Khurrana  had famously said she doesn’t give those “Maa wali vibes”.

Here in the second  part of Lust Stories, Gupta gives herself  a gala time as a grandmom  counselling her  grandchild Mrunal Thakur(who giggles her way through her perky part) to  have sex with her fiancée(Angad Bedi looking visibly uncomfortable  with barely six lines to speak) before marrying him.

Horny Granma’s  logic is,  “Even when you buy car you first test-drive  it.”

Right.

I have  never come across  a grandma like Gupta in R Balki’s  warm and  well-meaning  segment in this four-part saga where  one story, like Neeraj Ghaywan’s Geeli Pucchi in the  Karan  Johar anthology Ajeeb Dastaans  in  2021, stands  leaps and bounds  ahead  of the rest.

The Geeli Pucchi of  Lust Stories 2 is  Konkona Sen Sharma’s sensually ripe story of a very strange sexual bond between  a suburban single woman and her househelp. Both the vaginally  vibrant parts are played by two powerful  actresses Tillotama  Shome  and Amruta Subhash who give a stirring sensual  twist to  the  traditional maalkin-baai equation. Konkona herself pitches in as  a  voice on the phone in this deeply sexualized  story  of voyeurism, orgasms and other  forbidden  pleasures.

Interestingly Amit Sharma underuses the imperious  Kajol  in his story and also casts her against  her image  as a long-suffering woman in a crumbling feudal household with a husband ,played with gusto by the ever-dependable Kumud Mishra, who fucks everything that  moves(excuse the exaggeration) and treats his  wife as  a dormat.

Sharma’s Sahib Bibi Aur Julum is  so predictable it feels derivative even when it isn’t. The  twist at the end is  so selfdefeating it  feels  like the  narrative favours  torture and sadism for the  wife’s character even as he lunges at a shadowy freedom. The  storytelling  has a keen eye for  atmospheric  detail but the  leery tone is  off-putting.

Undeniably the worst story  of  the quartet is the one directed  by Sujoy Ghosh featuring Vijay Varma and Tamannaah Bhatia as former  lovers reuniting in what looks a  set representing a doll’s house depiction of  dystopia . For months we  have been hearing  of the  chemistry between Varma and Bhatia. Sure,there is  plenty of  kissing and caressing. But the chemistry  between the two is  as  artificial and  unconvincing as everything else in the story.

What was  Sujoy Ghosh thinking?  Maybe he  should have watched  his  co-directors’   take on  lust(a close cousin  to love, if we are to believe this  anthology) to get a feel of how the characters fall in place  as they struggle with their carnal compulsions.

Lust Stories 2  may not have any epiphanic moment like  Kiara Advani’s  cloudburst  of repressed sexuality in  Lust Stories in 2018. But it is  nonetheless a delectable followup to the  first four  forays into thirst burst.At times the  directors  seem  to be struggling with their definition  of lust. But eventually it all comes together in a seamless celebration of carnal pleasures, barring of course the Sujoy Ghosh segment  which is   full-blown  travesty.