This new anthology released by Netflix has been the talk of town since quite a while now. After Bombay Talkies, this movie brings together Anurag Kashyap, Zoya Akhtar, Dibakar Banerjee and Karan Johar again. This film is a compilation of short films by each of these directors and they explore the complexities around love and lust along with guilt, jealousy and other such emotions that follow, in urban India.
The fact that all the characters are mere common people makes it very relatable to the audience. This film portrays the emotional and sexual rapports between the characters in a very real and convincing manner.
Anurag Kashyap
It starts off with Anurag Kashyap’s short about a confused teacher Kalindi (Radhika Apte) who is exploring love and attraction by engaging in flings whilst being in an open, long distance relationship with her husband Mihir. She is a college professor who has a one night stand with a student of hers, and later warns him to not get involved and to not expect anything out of that connection. Instead she later finds herself obsessing over him and trying to grab his attention by stalking him and trying to know more about him by being a supposed ‘friend’ to him. Radhika Apte’s acting is very raw and you can’t help but relate to her thought process and emotions at some points, but the purpose of this story remains a little ambiguous.
Zoya Akhtar
Next, we move on to Zoya Akhtar’s film which explores how social classes play a role in relationships. Sudha (Bhumi Pednekar), a trustworthy and hardworking maid, is involved with the bachelor for whom she works. The story takes a turn, when Ajit (Neil Bhoopalam), the bachelor, decides to step into an arrange marriage set by his parents who come to visit him. Bhumi Pednekar barely has any dialogues, but still expresses the emotional turmoil of any woman in that situation aptly.
Dibakar Banerjee
The third short-film by Dibakar Banerjee portrays a modern marriage gone wrong. Reena (Manisha Koirala) is married with two kids, to Salman (Sanjay Kapoor), but is having an affair with his best friend, Sudhir (Jaideep Ahlawat), since some years. Reena seems to crave a sort of independence and control over her life, which is conveyed from many of her dialogues. She’s a woman who wants to start and end an affair on her own terms, and she does exactly that. This film seems a little dull and stretched after a point, but it does show how the recent marriage motto has become “live and let live”, when Reena and Salman, decide to not break their marriage in spite of their strained relationship and the revelation of her affair. The story doesn’t hold onto your attention that well, in comparison with other films, but it still gives you a peek of the skeletons in the closet of marriage.
Karan Johar
The last short in this anthology series is by Karan Johar and is the most entertaining one, in my opinion. The only part that irked at me in this story was the way the school teachers dressed, but apart from that this is a funny and entertaining story. Karan Johar touches a lot of issues in this story, how people judge divorced women, how the society makes people think that children are the only desire of a women, how men fail to reciprocate the sexual pleasure in a marriage, how the concept of women masturbating is hard for people to accept and how a common woman hence struggles to satiate her sexual desires. The actors have done a great job, and KJo has added his usual filmy masala touch to the story.
All in all, this surely is a one-time watch for the audience. Lately, a lot of films in Bollywood are trying to talk about similar issues – Lipstick under my Burkha, Veere di wedding to name a few, and it is a delight to watch these Bollywood experiments. I do feel that this film has been hyped more than it deserves to be, but it’s still an amazing attempt. The fact that each story in the film revolves around a female protagonist and that it tries to shed off a lot of taboos existing in the society with a great set of actors and directors makes it a landmark in Bollywood for sure.