The short answer: Konkona Sen Sharma’s The Mirror is the best of the eight released Lust Stories segments. Sujoy Ghosh’s Sex with the Ex sits at the bottom. Between them is a revealing split: the strongest shorts use desire to expose class, loneliness or power, while the weakest mistake a provocative setup for a complete drama.
This ranking covers all four films in 2018’s Lust Stories and all four in 2023’s Lust Stories 2. The countdown runs from the weakest at No. 8 to the strongest at No. 1. Plot details are discussed, but the biggest final twists are kept light.
All eight Lust Stories segments at a glance
No. 7 · A good idea turned into a lectureMade for Each Other
No. 6 · Potent anger, uneasy fitTilchatta
No. 5 · A performance chasing a messy filmAnurag Kashyap’s Kalindi story
No. 4 · The broadest crowd-pleaserKaran Johar’s Megha story
No. 3 · Adult desire with consequencesDibakar Banerjee’s Reena story
No. 2 · Silence cuts through classZoya Akhtar’s Sudha story
No. 1 · Best: desire, power and lonelinessThe Mirror
How we ranked the stories
Boldness alone does not win. The ranking weighs dramatic construction, performance, tonal control, how well each short uses the anthology’s theme, and whether its final turn deepens what came before. That standard favors stories in which lust changes how we understand a character, not stories that merely announce a message about sex.
8. Sex with the Ex (Lust Stories 2)
Vijay Varma plays Vijay Chauhan, a married businessman whose car trouble leads him to Shanti, the former wife who vanished from his life years earlier. Tamannaah Bhatia gives Shanti an intentionally unreal allure, and the saturated production design announces that ordinary reality may not apply. For a few minutes, the artificiality is intriguing. It could be lust as a trap built from memory, guilt and wish fulfillment.
The trouble is that the film keeps adding mystery while draining tension. The dialogue labors over seduction, the visual exaggeration quickly becomes a shield for thin characterization, and the twist arrives with far less force than the setup promises. Desire does not expose Vijay so much as push him through a prearranged genre mechanism. Among eight shorts, this is the one whose surface is busiest while its emotional center is faintest.
OTT availability: Stream Lust Stories 2 on Netflix.
7. Made for Each Other (Lust Stories 2)
R. Balki begins with a useful provocation. Veda and Arjun appear perfectly matched on paper, but Veda’s grandmother insists that marriage should also account for sexual compatibility. Neena Gupta sells the grandmother’s candor, while Mrunal Thakur and Angad Bedi find some comedy in the young couple’s embarrassment.
Then the short starts repeating its own thesis. Characters speak in slogans, the hotel montage substitutes for discovery, and the couple remain examples in an argument rather than people whose intimacy changes them. The idea is healthier and more relevant than the film around it. That keeps Made for Each Other above last place, but it never escapes the feeling of a public-service message dressed as a romantic comedy.
OTT availability: Stream Lust Stories 2 on Netflix.
6. Tilchatta (Lust Stories 2)
Tilchatta moves away from mutual desire and into coercion, entitlement and the lust for control. Kajol’s Devyani lives inside a decaying mansion with Suraj Singh, the abusive landlord played by Kumud Mishra. When a new domestic worker enters the house, Devyani sees a possible route out of the trap for herself and her son.
The crumbling haveli, the insect imagery and Mishra’s performance give the short an appropriately rotten texture. Its anger is not the problem. Its placement here comes from the way the final reversal turns cruelty into a blunt shock, leaving Devyani’s strategy and the anthology’s central theme less developed than they should be. As a nasty feudal horror story it has force. As a Lust Stories chapter, it feels imported from a darker anthology.
OTT availability: Stream Lust Stories 2 on Netflix.
5. Anurag Kashyap’s Kalindi story (Lust Stories)
Kalindi, a married college professor, begins an affair with her student Tejas and insists that she can keep desire free of possession. Her behavior soon proves otherwise. Radhika Apte attacks the contradiction with startling energy: Kalindi lectures, rationalizes, stalks and performs freedom while jealousy steadily takes over.
The short earns credit for refusing to make its female protagonist tidy or admirable. It also acknowledges an uncomfortable teacher-student power dynamic that the character would rather intellectualize. Yet Kashyap’s direct-to-camera monologues, comic side characters and extended unraveling keep tugging in different directions. Apte remains fascinating even when the film becomes indulgent, which is exactly why this lands in the middle rather than near the bottom.
OTT availability: Stream Lust Stories on Netflix.
4. Karan Johar’s Megha story (Lust Stories)
Megha marries the sweet but oblivious Paras and discovers that his idea of a successful sex life begins and ends with his own satisfaction. Kiara Advani makes Megha’s frustration funny without making it trivial, Vicky Kaushal is perfectly sincere as the clueless husband, and Neha Dhupia’s librarian Rekha provides the push toward self-knowledge.
Johar builds to a broad comic set piece that is both predictable and unforgettable. The symbolism is loud, and several supporting characters are closer to caricatures than people, but the short understands that embarrassment can be liberating once secrecy breaks. Its craft is less delicate than the top three, yet its punchline serves an argument instead of replacing one. It remains the franchise’s most effective crowd-pleaser.
OTT availability: Stream Lust Stories on Netflix.
3. Dibakar Banerjee’s Reena story (Lust Stories)
Reena is having an affair with Sudhir, who is also the closest friend of her husband Salman. That familiar triangle becomes stranger and richer once the two men’s long friendship enters the room. Manisha Koirala, Jaideep Ahlawat and Sanjay Kapoor play people old enough to know the damage they are causing and practiced enough to hide it until hiding becomes impossible.
Banerjee’s short is the most verbally intricate chapter in the first anthology. Loyalty is not divided cleanly between marriage and friendship, and Reena refuses to remain the object that the men negotiate around. Some restless editing distracts from the performers, but the emotional geometry keeps shifting until her final decision feels like an act of release. It is not the anthology’s warmest film, but it may be its most recognizably adult.
OTT availability: Stream Lust Stories on Netflix.
2. Zoya Akhtar’s Sudha story (Lust Stories)
Sudha is a domestic worker sleeping with Ajit, the man whose apartment she cleans. Their private intimacy appears to erase hierarchy until his parents arrive with a prospective bride and Sudha is expected to serve them. Bhumi Pednekar says remarkably little, but the film reads each change in her posture and each automatic household task as a fresh boundary being drawn.
The short is compact enough to risk feeling underdeveloped, especially if you want Ajit’s motives examined as closely as Sudha’s pain. Its restraint is also its power. Akhtar never grants the affair a romantic fantasy that the social order cannot support. Sweets, slippers and cleaning become instruments of humiliation without a speech announcing their meaning. Only The Mirror surpasses it because that later film lets both sides of a similar class divide push back.
OTT availability: Stream Lust Stories on Netflix.
1. The Mirror (Lust Stories 2)
Ishita returns to her Mumbai flat and discovers her domestic worker Seema having sex there. Shock becomes curiosity, curiosity becomes a private ritual, and the mirror in the bedroom turns looking into a charged exchange. Tillotama Shome and Amruta Subhash make the arrangement funny, erotic, lonely and dangerous, often within the same beat.
What separates Konkona Sen Sharma’s film from the other seven is reciprocity. Ishita has property and employment power, Seema has knowledge and the ability to deny access, and neither woman can pretend the situation is innocent once the looking is acknowledged. The apartment’s shortage of privacy is not just a setting. It becomes the mechanism through which class and desire collide.
The short also knows when discomfort should remain unresolved. It does not flatten voyeurism into empowerment or reduce Seema to a lesson for Ishita. Anand Bansal’s framing keeps changing who is seen, who controls the frame and who is exposed. The Mirror is not merely the clear peak of Lust Stories 2. It is the franchise entry that most completely turns lust into drama.
OTT availability: Stream Lust Stories 2 on Netflix.
The final verdict
The first Lust Stories remains the stronger anthology because even its uneven chapters are built around recognizable emotional contradictions. The sequel has the highest individual peak in The Mirror, but three of its four films drift toward lectures, revenge horror or supernatural pulp. That uneven history makes the new directors chosen for Lust Stories 3 more interesting than a simple franchise handoff.
For readers tracking what comes next, our Lust Stories 3 release, cast and director guide collects the confirmed details. Until the third anthology arrives, start with The Mirror, follow it with Zoya Akhtar’s and Dibakar Banerjee’s 2018 shorts, and treat the rest as a study in how risky this format can be.
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