Just
watched the new Netflix original Lust
Stories made by the same quartet of directors who had done Bombay Talkies, and which I had enjoyed.
This too is a four in one, and touted to be, if you go by the review in The Telegraph of Kolkata, about lust
from the woman’s perspective, and what is more important, does not shame her
but makes her feel more liberated, more powerful.
I
found the first story delightful in a cynical way. The young woman says she is
wary about men with whom she has one-night stands, because they get attached
and emotional too easily, and start stalking her and attempting to control her
life and making a nuisance of themselves in every possible way: they apparently
lack the maturity to ‘take it and leave it’ as every smart, modern, liberated
person should. Then she turns around and
behaves in exactly the way she says she despises in men as soon as she has
bedded a very young man – who happens to be one of her students in college –
she haunts him, follows him around, rings him up incessantly, screams at him at
every imagined slight, tries her utmost to break up his other relationship
because she cannot bear to see him with another female, even at a restaurant,
and yet, when he, embarrassed and shocked and guilty for no real fault of his
own, offers to make her his permanent one and only, snaps at him without a trace of self-consciousness ‘Are you mad? I
am a married woman!’ I do hope that the writer/director has been trying to tell
us precisely what I have been saying all my adult life: there is nothing
universally good about women, many of them can be just as crazy and unpleasant
as the worst of men. And I wonder whether it was a deliberate stroke of
artistry to show that highly unstable and immature characters
like that can become teachers these
days... one last thing that this mini-movie brought to mind is something that I
have been alternately laughing and grimacing over for quite some time now – the
way people all over the world have gone stark, raving mad about ensuring
whether or not the sex was consensual, the time is not far off when all men who
know what is good for them will get audio recorded- (or better still, written
and signed) statements from their about-to-be partners in bed that it was just
so, even their own wives, preferably every
time they are thinking of doing it, and file the growing mass of paper away
in a burglar-proof safe for the day when they will be called for in court. Watch the movie to find out which scene I am
talking about (and one very personal take: Radhika Apte is ageing fast and not
gracefully, unless the makeup man was told to present her that way).
The
second story is very real, very common, and very sad. The domestic help pleasures
her employer in bed and hopes that something like a good and lasting
relationship might come of it, only to see a match being fixed up for him right
before her eyes, and he going around as if she has ceased to exist, entirely
insouciant and unapologetic. I know just how she feels, as did Tagore – in more
than one poignant story (The Postmaster and The Castaway spring immediately to
mind) he has shown how the slighted party feels, how it can happen to either
gender and regardless of age, and how there is no help for it; the victim has
to grin and bear it. Which is exactly what Sudha does when she bites into the mithai and smiles resignedly if a trifle
ruefully to herself before deciding to move on. The sex bit is actually
irrelevant unless you are a prurient teen regardless of your physical age.
Which is of course actually a very common type of adult in India still (you
should see the prudish and ignorant mother in the fourth movie who came to yell
at the schoolteachers for not scolding her daughter for chatting on Facebook
and giving her ‘bad books’ – Lolita – to read), but that is neither the
director’s fault nor mine.
The
third story is about a failing marriage and the woman finding solace in the
arms of her husband’s lifelong best friend. The husband, though overtly more
assertive and domineering, is actually much the weaker character (haven’t I
seen far too many!), and the woman, as portrayed by Monisha Koirala, is not a
very sympathetic character either. I doubt very strongly whether this can
actually be called one of the ‘lust’ stories, because the lovers seem neither
to get much pleasure out of the sex nor to be too eager about it; I would have
said they are in it because they have found true companionship, but the man is
not keen on making new, deep commitments which conflict with an old one, to wit
the friendship, and in any case the curtain drops over ambiguity, because the woman
tells the lover that her husband has ordered ‘this must end’ and goes back with
and to him... the reviewer in The Telegraph called this one the ‘most mature’ story,
but I think I am much older than she and have seen much more of the world, and
to me it remained very unclear what the whole point was, unless it was simply
to show that lots of people are caught up in nasty relational tangles and have
no real idea how to get out of them, though they might thrash around like
landed fish for a while. Yes, indeed, such is life, whether you are filthy rich
or not.
The
last one is the most hilarious, though one cannot miss the sadness. But at
least there is hope here. The young husband cannot sufficiently satisfy his new
bride, and she finds a better substitute for him in a vibrator (the woman from
whom she had filched it had called it her real husband: this one character at
least was in-your-face about not wanting much out of marriage beyond sex), but
unfortunately drops a bomb in the household while doing it, and it nearly comes
to a divorce, were it not that the husband wants to see if the marriage can be
made to work, still, because he has apparently fallen in love. What a pity that
so many marriages remain loveless and unfulfilling in this country for reasons
like this, simply because ‘nice people’ prefer not to talk about ‘such things’
if they can help it, whereas a little bit of honesty and candour would quickly
bring a happy resolution via the doctor’s prescription or a shrink’s counsel. I
wonder whether the juxtaposition of sharply contrary women’s views was
inadvertent or not, but it is good to see that we are beginning to acknowledge
in a forum as public as the cinema that while many women still think that
having children is the be all and end all of a woman’s life, there are many
others who think it’s all about sex and nothing else. I have never been able to
decide which is the more pathetic, the more revolting attitude.
Nice
though not unforgettable cinema, slickly made, provoking thoughts that I had
and shared thirty and more years ago. But I wonder about that reviewer’s
opinion. It is good if this sort of thing does not shame women any more – I have
never really believed that shyness (lojja) is woman’s ornament, and have seen
that in practice this lojja comes out
as coyness and prudishness and opportunism, which most men find both mildly
disgusting and very difficult to handle. But, how do these situations make
women feel ‘more liberated and powerful’? That could at best be said about the
woman in the last movie: watch and judge for yourself. And if behaving like the
cantankerous female in the first one is what smart urban Indian women think does make them liberated and powerful, I
will have difficulty stifling yawns when it comes to dealing with women who
claim they are grown up. I have known women of a bygone age who were far
stronger, deeper, more interesting specimens of humanity, you see – women who did worthwhile things and whom you
could have intelligent conversations with. Alas, I have hardly met half a
dozen like that in the 25 to 60 age-group in the last thirty odd years, in
person or over the net, though I have dealt with thousands. I wonder if the
directors could make a movie based on what I have had the misfortune to see?
