Ploy

This is a real surprise and a most assured film from the Thai director, Pen-Ek Ratanaruang. Essentially a quite, thoughtful and insightful film with little storyline but half a dozen characters that totally fascinate. A husband and wife check into a Bangkok hotel in the early hours and in that never-never land of jet lag and an unfamiliar room a strange state develops. In reality, that is as well as in this movie. In fact we are not far into this little tale before we realize it is not easy to tell what is reality, fantasy or dream. Sometimes this can be irritating but here it is irrelevant. We are so drawn into this tale that even little details such as whether it is 'real' seem not to matter. I have not experienced anything quite like this since 'Celine and Julie Go Boating' and that was many years ago. Beautifully shot we find ourselves at one moment gazing at an entwined couple and at the next the sunlight dancing on the floor below a set of hotel room curtains. With plenty of space between 'action' there is time for us to reflect as the characters do and this magical and inspiring film is a most rewarding experience.

It is difficult to tell what the director's intentions were with this Thai film called Ploy. The three central characters are a husband (Wit) and wife (Dang) and a young woman (Ploy) the husband meets in an airport bar.

The film starts at a slow pace--appropriate as the tired husband and wife travelers arrive in Thailand in the early morning hours. But the pace remains sluggish until we realize that's the style of the film Then we discover that some happenings may only be the stuff of dreams.

Eventually, it becomes apparent that this is not a simple narrative. Side stories branch off, some action may be fantasy, and other plot developments seem to terminate without resolution.

Though it all, the "central action" that takes place in the couple's hotel room is filmed very deliberately. The camera lingers on vacated spaces. It traces the lines of architectural elements, rendering them cubist abstractions. It captures inactivity. The result is the film becomes a kind of meditation.

The film did not lose my attention. Although the storyline was ambiguous, I was still engaged.

Clearly the central theme has something to do with the shelf life of (married) relationships. Wit says, "Everyone is lonely. Most people don't know it because they're too busy." The film is named after the young girl's character, presumably because she is the catalyst that sparks the couple's imaginations and fears.

With fantastic induction of 6ixtynin9 and what was supposedly the peak of Pen Ek Ratanaruang as a director indicated in Last Life in the Universe came an expected decline of Invisible Waves (which was OK, yet not as good as the other two mentioned). But Ploy was a positive surprise! After the Invisible Waves which seemed to carry on with the ideas of Last Life in The Universe (hence, the director couldn't find or just didn't bother looking for a new, more creative approach) this was a completely new refreshment... just like Last Life in The Universe was at its time. I don't know if this is the best film of this prominent director (I cannot make my mind up... it's still between 6ixtynin9, Last Life and Ploy) but with Ploy he showed that he's still fresh and can strike hard unlike many "one movie" directors who are made famous by one appearance and then simply decline with other works. This is not the case here and this makes my sight attached to Pen Ek's works as closely as never before. A brilliant piece from one of the greatest directors.

The basic structure of any story is that it have a beginning, middle, and end. I've seen several "art house" movies that lack an end, and I find that infuriating. While this movie technically has an end phase, there is no conclusion, and that's almost as bad. It poses several questions through various scenarios that may be linked (or not) and that may be real (or not). This violates the basic trust that should exist between film and viewer.

In a drama, we are asked to suspend our disbelief and indulge the director's vision; in exchange, the director is supposed to tell us a story that had some personal truth in it. This movie plays out more like an action film: there is no context for some people, and no resolution for any. It's like they're all background characters that exist purely to be ignored. This is a hard pill to swallow when the cast consists of half a dozen people.

All that being said, I thought the acting was good and the women were beautiful, so I enjoyed watching the film on that basis alone.

Reviewed at its North American Premiere screening Sept. 7, 2007 at the Scotiabank Theatre as part of the Visions Program during the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF).

Thai director Pen-Ek Ratanaruang's "Ploy" has been one of our favourites at TIFF this year. The film has a very sly and often languid build-up to various shocks as it unfolds. I'm not going to spoil those for anyone by saying too much here.

The film's setup is that a man Wit (who runs a restaurant in America) and his wife Dang (a former well known actress) are returning to Thailand after an absence of 10 years to attend a funeral. They are staying at a Bangkok hotel and while the wife settles into their room the husband goes down to the bar for cigarettes. There he meets a backpacking teenager named Ploy who evokes his sympathy (she has a black eye, possibly from an abusive boyfriend, and she is also from his hometown of Phuket) and without any apparent sexual scheming he simply invites the girl back up to the hotel room to rest up while she awaits her mother's arrival.

The wife doesn't take kindly to this intrusion and the teenager is taken aback as well ("You didn't tell me your girlfriend was going to be here!"). The comic absurdity of this setup gradually starts taking a darker turn with petty theft, suspicions of adultery and possible murders and rapes entering the storyline before we're done. Meanwhile a maid and bartender at the hotel are having a mysterious sexy assignation simultaneous to the main plot line and Dang's former acting history also attracts the attentions of a stalker. How these different plot strands intertwine and tangle and then untangle and resolve themselves was a pleasure to watch. The film started with the most basic of elements and then let you think you knew where it is going before it pulled the rug out from under you several times.

Actress Lalita Panyopas (from 1999's "Ruang talok 69") makes a welcome return in the role of Dang to director Ratanaruang's ensemble. I was also happy to see a bright clear picture in the print of "Ploy" after last year's TIFF print of "Invisible Waves" was muddy and dark.