Lust Stories 3: Kiran Rao on why keeping lust alive in marriage takes work

As with Shakun Batra director Kiran Rao made her first short film in her early 20s at film school Jamia in Delhi that she recalls was about a 31yearoldrsquos birthday gone south because of a husband who doesnrsquot care Her short film debut in Netflixrsquos Lust Stories 3 mdash as with most shorts mdash would be hard to describe without a spoiler thoughSuffice it to state that itrsquos a play on Shakespearersquos Comedy of Errors but rather serious Shakunrsquos on the other hand with Ali Fazal Radhikka Madan felt to me as a running narrative on the addictive nature of lsquobreakup sexrsquo Shakun disagrees but adds that could make for a fine elevator pitchThree of the four directors on the threequel of the Emmynominated Netflix franchise competently produced by Ashi Dua are men mdash while the anthology looking at relationships through the prism of sex alone for the most part seems entirely from the womenrsquos PoVTake Vikramaditya Motwanersquos opening comedy starring Radhika Apte Konkona Sensharma on coupleswap The best bit that actor Vijay Varma gets in it is that his character experiences trauma from whisky ghazal because they remind him of his alcoholic dad HilariousThe filmmakers on the other roster direct features otherwise Vishal Bhardwaj whorsquos filmed several shorts in the past says he finds the medium hugely liberating ldquoThe commitment involved isnrsquot as long And you have the opportunity to say something crisply with design and craftrdquoWhich is precisely what Vishal does transporting his plot to 1980s Hyderabad mdash about an anonymous Urdu writer of smut Aditi Rao Hydari whose fantasies chiefly imagining her husband Siddharth soar over her everyday married lifeWhat did you think of the said short films My favourite was Vishalrsquos while enough people have told me they loved Vikramadityarsquos or Kiranrsquos more An online survey on my social media handle rates Shakunrsquos by far the best The comparisons are immaterial What matters is if the anthology works as a whole It sure doesLust legacyIn lsquoLust Storiesrsquo 2018 filmmakers Anurag Kashyap Zoya Akhtar Dibakar Banerjee and Karan Johar came together to tell four distinct stories exploring desire and relationships In lsquoLust Stories 2rsquo 2023 R Balki Konkona Sensharma Sujoy Ghosh and Amit Ravindernath Sharma gave their takes on desireQuick bytes with the directorsPersonally how do you make a distinction between love and lustKiran Rao When you see someone yoursquore attracted to is that lust The curiosity about a person you want to be with or know more about does that start from love or something chemical Lust can be the starting point Could it be the ending point tooAbsolutely Also what makes a person sensually attractive often is the conversation their humour You could find a person sexy because of their smile not necessarily for how they look with their shirt off Itrsquos hard to distinguish But I do think love comes after knowing a person including their flawsEveryone must watch Belgian psychotherapist Esther Perel when she talks about how to keep the spark in a marriage alive One of the things missing once yoursquove been married for long is you know the person too wellMysteryrsquos gone Therersquos no chase Why is it that people are interested in extramarital affairs Because therersquos something unknown Therersquos potential of knowing someone Therefore to keep lust alive in a marriage is always workYour film gets funnier once you introduce Korean drama into the story with the imaginary characters Jin and Min mdash did you dive deep into the popular TV genre to understand it betterVikramaditya Motwane I didnrsquot do a deepdive My research was I asked my ADs assistant directors do you follow Kdramas Yes So as long as they are Kdrama fans Irsquom gonna trust them to surprise me and letme beNetflix did get me in touch with people in Korea We had a couple of conversations where I said this is what we are trying to do and if itrsquos kosher They kinda told me where it would land in the Korean landscape and what my title sequence should be The actors are actually from Korea One of them is in Bombay right now The other is a professional actor living in DelhiOf all the lust stories why are you looking at marriage when yoursquove never been married yourself or is that the reasonShakun Batra I was actually going through a relationship when we werenrsquot able to communicate and sex was filling up the gap I started reading about how bodies tend to communicate Theyrsquore very primitiveThe body needs closure too Without giving away spoilers these two people in the film Ali Radhikka havenrsquot addressed some of the grief part of their marriage The sex then is still trying to keep them together right It happens with most relationships Your heart and mind may say this relationshiprsquos over But bodies still sometimes tend to continue And whyrsquos that For me that is very excitingLet alone Lust Stories yoursquove done Zubaan Pe Lagahellip Namak Ishq Ka from Omkara mdash the worldrsquos lustiest song ever was that the intentionVishal Bhardwaj Gulzar Saab is a master Even Beedi Jalai Le if you read minutely is about adultery When he says Itni Sardi Hai Kisi Ka Lihaaf Lele Ja Padosi Ke Chulhe Se Aag Lele mdash he means the neighbourrsquos wife That was the theme for Omkara so lusty and thatrsquos how involved he gets in the script Namak Ishq Ka was originally written as the antara of Beedi Jalai Le I drifted from that metre while composing the tune But I usually have 5060 chhilke shells or rejected lines of Gulzar Saab lying around which I saw in my notebook when making the new song I picked up this line where he writes Zubaan Pe Lage Namak Ishq Ka Toh Duniya Savaadi Lagehellip which became Balam Se Maanga Maanga Re Namak Ishq Kahellip and then the final version