Netflix’s Lust Stories is the only anthology to have made it to its third season, and there might be good reason. For a society as repressed as ours, sex brings out adequate intrigue on the part of the audience, assuring a base viewership. Meanwhile, by constantly shuffling filmmakers, the interpretations remain fresh, and sex becomes a capsule to be filled with commentary on inequities, female desire, and a rarely spoken language in an otherwise verbose film industry.Lust Stories 3 features a line-up of directors, which audiences will forever be curious about: Kiran Rao, Vikramaditya Motwane, Shakun Batra and Vishal Bhardwaj. The results are middling to positive. But one thing I genuinely appreciated about all four films, is their intent to showcase the length and breadth of Hindi cinema, and its varying aesthetic, refusing to paint Bollywood as a monolith – which it has begun to seem like, given its over-dependence on star-led spectacles. Also, I enjoyed the music in all films, complimenting the sensibility of the respective mise en scene. Vikramaditya MotwaneShonali (Konkona Sen Sharma) and Padma (Radhika Apte) are two women in their forties, stuck in a sexless marriage with their husbands, Debu (Abhishek Banerjee) and Hemant (Vijay Varma) respectively. At the suggestion of a K-drama that both women are obsessed with, they come up with a plan of swapping their husbands during a staycation, in a bid to spice things up.Written by Avinash Sampath (who wrote Motwane’s last two feature films for Netflix) the film comes on too strong out of the gates, understandable for the tight runtime of ~40 mins. There’s a lot of information to be conveyed about the world, characters, and conflict. However, it’s easy to look past that because its primary cast brings its game face. Sen Sharma, who directed one of the shorts in the second instalment of Lust Stories, is instantly believable as the enthusiastic Shonali, capable of going beyond her spousal insecurity in a bid to revive her sexual appetite. Similarly, Apte (a riot in comedy, and the only actor returning from the class of 2019), as Padma, is a good foil of caution for Shonali’s overzealous sexual fantasies.A screengrab from the trailer of ‘Lust Stories 3’.Motwane’s film has one excellent moment featuring Vijay Varma, whiskey and ghazals, where I laughed out loud. However, as The Invite showed us a few weeks ago, the initial excitement of consensual adultery rarely lives up to its bombastic promise. It leaves the couples with stark realisations — one of which might be that the key to our happiness lies in our own hands.Kiran RaoNetflix’s excessive neon-lit production design is on full display in Kiran Rao’s short. Written by Tanaji Dasgupta, the film is almost set in a parallel universe, where filmy contrivance is the law. Which explains how someone who looks like Gurfateh Pirzada, with his made-in-Lokhandwala abs, plays Karan, scurrying around delivering pizza orders. Debutante Sana Thampi plays Lisa, a worker bee at a nail art salon.Both extremely good looking people, their meet-cute happens on a street. Sparks fly, and he’s frequenting her apartment soon enough. The film has a couple of surprises, which I wouldn’t like to reveal, after which it becomes a caper film, along the lines of early Guy Ritchie and Raj & DK.A screengrab from the trailer of ‘Lust Stories 3’.Lifted by Ram Sampath’s music (‘Vaari Vaari’ by Sona Mohapatra is my favourite), the film remains peppy for most of its runtime, even over-reaches in a few occasions. I was amused by Poonam Mathur, playing Pirzada’s mother visiting from Bathinda, who steals the film with her three scenes. A climactic reveal doesn’t feel as satisfying, but Pirzada gives a good exhibition of his ability to inspire laughs with his straight face. Let’s give the neon lighting some rest, though.Shakun BatraVarun (Ali Fazal) and Sailee (Radhikka Madan) are getting married in the first scene when we meet them. They only met a few months ago, we’re told. “Do they know?”, she asks him, to which he responds by saying, “No” – his eyes are brimming. They switch to celebratory mode after that. The scene cuts to them standing outside the marriage registrar’s office, requisitioning a divorce. A little over six years have passed, we learn, and the uncoupling seems civilised. Which both lawyers can’t seem to marvel enough about, making the arbitration that much simpler.Shakun Batra’s short might be my favourite one in this anthology, especially given the director’s predilection with his characters’ contradictions, who rarely exist in binaries. This one explores a couple who can’t have a conversation without it becoming a fight, but also mourn their sexual compatibility. As the judge prescribes a six-month cooling off period, Varun and Sailee, have multiple sexual encounters, much to the confusion of their parents. Are they together? Or are they getting divorced? – they all seem to be internally screaming.Fazal and Madan are excellent at playing people who arrive at answers after a series of bad decisions. Batra’s short is essentially a couple grieving their relationship, and reaching a point of friendship after exorcising all the unpleasantness between them. It’s a portrait of how leftover passion becomes a trigger for a couple, seemingly beyond mediation, to address the good, bad and ugly in their relationship before they bury it for good. Only what remains after is a beautiful flower bed of a marriage that was (instead of a cesspit of unresolved poison and paranoia).Vishal BhardwajSaira (Aditi Rao Hyadri) is a teaching assistant for a literature professor in a women’s college, in Hyderabad in 1987. Her husband, Badru (Hyadri’s real-life husband, Siddharth), is a self-serious homeopath doctor, too stiff to ask about his wife’s pleasure points. Instead, he starts his day by asking about her bowel movement. When Saira is introduced to a Mills-and-Boons replica by the girl students in her class, she argues even erotica can be “well written”, and that it all rests on the intent of the writer.I was able to empathise with the intent of Bhardwaj’s film, but this one might be the weakest in the anthology. Siddharth doing an objectification dance in a veshti is funny, but the short quickly starts going around in circles. To prove her point about erotica coinciding with good literature, Saira writes her own book on ways to teach men to explore their partners’ pleasure points.Bhardwaj is the oldest among this quartet of filmmakers, and it shows in his formal choices. The garish Netflix production design to recreate Hyderabad of the 80s, doesn’t make things more pleasant. Gajraj Rao, playing Saira’s empathetic father-in-law, who speaks through his mouthful of paan, becomes grating very quickly. Also, Hyadri is too wholesome a performer to bring any intricacy to Saira. It’s not a terrible performance per se, but it never ascends to the next level.§Overall, Lust Stories S03 has its sparks and eureka moments in the midst of some generic baiting. Entrusted with exploring lust in an Indian society more straitjacketed than it’s arguably ever been, the series soldiers on with the responsibility to make India less coy about sex. Even if it doesn’t solve much by the end, it poses enough interesting questions to make (especially male) viewers think, and hopefully act with a little more tenderness in the bedroom.*Lust Stories S03 is streaming on Netflix.