Lust Stories 3 premieres on Netflix on September 18, 2026, three years after the largely forgettable Lust Stories 2 and eight years after the original anthology that launched the franchise in 2018. This third edition brings together four of Hindi cinema’s distinctive voices: Vikramaditya Motwane, Kiran Rao, Shakun Batra and Vishal Bhardwaj. The critical response is the warmest the franchise has received since the first film, with reviewers broadly agreeing that Lust Stories 3 is the most complete and consistently satisfying anthology yet, even as individual segments invite debate.
Rather than a single story, Lust Stories 3 consists of four shorts, each directed by a different filmmaker and exploring a different dimension of desire, marriage and modern relationships. Motwane’s segment follows two 40-year-old mothers in sexless marriages who attempt a husband swap inspired by a K-drama. Rao’s story follows a pizza delivery boy and nail stylist in Mumbai whose whirlwind romance conceals a drug-dealing secret and a twin. Batra’s contribution is the most emotionally intense, following a young divorcing couple who keep returning to each other through break-up sex as their marriage officially dissolves. Bhardwaj closes the anthology with a period-set story about a woman in 1980s Hyderabad who turns to erotic literature and eventually her own writing to give language to desires her comfortable marriage has never satisfied.
THR India’s Rahul Desai, who gave the film its most detailed critical analysis, described Lust Stories 3 as reclaiming the anthology format after years of streaming fatigue and the “utterly forgettable” Lust Stories 2. His central argument is that this edition works not by producing one outstanding segment and several weak ones, the usual anthology trap, but by treating each short as “a different organ” in a body that only makes full sense together. He noted that lust is framed as “a middle-class construct, a weapon, a medicine, and a language” across the four films, making this conceptual diversity the anthology’s defining strength.
Rotten Tomatoes’ aggregated critical consensus similarly noted that while some segments lean heavily on their premises or twists, the film’s biggest strength is its willingness to treat female desire as an important part of relationships rather than a taboo subject. Binged’s review also highlighted how the four-director structure works because the stories feel genuinely different, with Motwane bringing social comedy and awkwardness, Rao an urban crime-romance, Batra emotional fracture and Bhardwaj literary fantasy.
Motwane leads off with the most commercially legible segment. Radhika Apte plays the prudish Padma and Konkona Sen Sharma the adventurous Shonali, two women who attempt a husband swap after finding inspiration in a K-drama. Vijay Varma plays Hemant and Abhishek Banerjee plays Debu.
THR India noted the clever against-type casting, with Konkona usually playing the role associated with Apte and Varma often taking on roles similar to Banerjee’s. Desai singled out Apte as the segment’s most valuable performance, writing that her Padma is “all nerves and shame and thrill and contradictions.” He noted the segment’s “gimmicky resolution” but acknowledged that it makes a sincere point: rekindling the fire is not for everyone. Bollywood Hungama called Motwane’s direction convincing and praised the finale as unexpected.
Kiran Rao’s contribution is the most playful and self-consciously stylised, presenting a music-video-coded Mumbai romance between Gurfateh Pirzada’s drug-dealing pizza boy Karan and Sana Thampi’s nail stylist Lisa. THR described it as “lightweight” and noted that it works best as a “condiment in a broth of meaty flavours,” while acknowledging its depiction of how lust can become an instrument of ambition in a dream-selling metropolis. Scroll.in found Pirzada convincing but criticised the episode for spelling out its twist, leaving little room for doubt or imagination. Bollywood Hungama described Rao’s direction as a departure from her usual style and noted her evolution since Dhobi Ghat and Laapataa Ladies.
The most consistent critical praise has gone to Shakun Batra’s contribution, the only full-bodied dramatic segment of the four. Ali Fazal and Radhika Madan play Varun and Sainee, a couple in the official cooling-off period before their divorce who keep being drawn back together through physical intimacy.
THR India’s Desai described them as “estranged sharks trapped in a washing machine,” whose last-gasp chemistry becomes a crutch for revising memories they thought they had moved beyond. He praised Batra for returning to his comfort zone of psycho-sexual tension and called Fazal and Madan terrific individually and electric together. His main reservation was a third-act tipping point where the characters begin over-explaining themselves in “healing-core, yoga-romance aesthetic” language, spelling out subtext that had been working effectively on its own. Binged echoed this observation, noting that some endings in the anthology feel determined to deliver a neat takeaway rather than trusting the audience to sit with complexity.
The anthology closes with Vishal Bhardwaj’s most flamboyant and divisive entry. Real-life partners Siddharth and Aditi Rao Hydari play Badru and Saira in 1980s Hyderabad, a couple whose functional marriage leaves Saira hungry for something she cannot name until she discovers erotic literature. Rahul Desai described it as “Bhansali-lite” and “overlong,” acknowledging that Bhardwaj controls it “just about enough to stick the landing” while calling the segment an excessive but fun ride. He praised its Hyderabadi flavour, the montage of word-induced female experiences, Gajraj Rao as the paan-chewing father-in-law and lines such as “the Vasco da Gama of bedrooms.” Rotten Tomatoes noted that Bhardwaj delivers “lushness and lustiness,” embodied by the dreamy but demanding Saira, while Bollywood Hungama described his direction as “over-the-top per the requirement.”
What most reviews agree on is that Lust Stories 3 has moved the franchise forward by refusing to let any single segment overshadow the whole. As Desai observed, the film’s victory is one of “perspective”; rather than encouraging viewers to rank the shorts, it invites comparison between the circumstances and settings they depict. Binged similarly noted that the ensemble cast succeeds because the performers avoid treating the subject merely as an excuse for sensuality, instead playing desire as something that can be awkward, funny and deeply personal.
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Film Details : Lust Stories 3
Directors: Vikramaditya Motwane, Kiran Rao, Shakun Batra, Vishal Bhardwaj
Cast: Radhika Apte, Konkona Sen Sharma, Vijay Varma, Abhishek Banerjee, Gurfateh Pirzada, Sana Thampi, Ali Fazal, Radhika Madan, Aditi Rao Hydari, Siddharth, Gajraj Rao
Producers: Ronnie Screwvala, Ashi Dua Sara
Production: RSVP Movies, Flying Unicorn Entertainment
Platform: Netflix
Release Date: September 18, 2026
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