Ploy

Pen-Ek Ratanaruang
Thailand
2007

Is it true that couples are never lonely?

107", 35mm
Color, Thai

about the film

Set in a Bangkok hotel, Pen-ek Ratanaruang’s latest film is a perceptive study of marital unhappiness, jealousy and the erotic ethos that often binds them. Ploy revolves around Wit and Dang, a married professional couple whose love has gone cold. They have returned to Thailand for a funeral after a decade in the United States. Jet-lagged, Wit goes down to the hotel bar while his wife sleeps. There he meets Ploy, a mysterious teenage girl waiting for her mother who is due to arrive in about five hours. She asks him for a cigarette, and he invites her to his room to freshen up while she waits. Ploy accepts nonchalantly; we never quite grasp what Wit is thinking, and Dang is infuriated. Beautiful lovemaking ensues in a room across the hall throughout the film. In the dreamlike sequences to follow, Ratanaruang does not reveal what is real, imagined or dream. Rather, Ploy is a flow through emotions we cannot quite grasp. An erotic psychological thriller at times, a hypnotizing meditation on love lost at others, Ploy confirms Ratanaruang as one of Asia’s most interesting contemporary filmmakers.

about the director

Pen-ek Ratanaruang was born in Bangkok in 1962 and studied art history at the Pratt Institute in New York City. After working as a graphic artist, he returned to Thailand, where he spent five years as an art director before gaining international recognition as a director of commercials. He has directed the features Fun Bar Karaoke (1997), 6ixtynin9 (1999), Transistor Love Story (2001), Last Life in the Universe (2003) and Invisible Waves (2006), and the shorts Twelve Twenty (2006) and Total Bangkok (2006). Ploy is his most recent feature.

awards

2007 Cannes Film Festival
Toronto Film Festival
Viennale

screenings

February 15 Friday, 5:00 PM AFM Fitaş Beyoğlu 2

February 17 Sunday, 12:30 PM AFM Fitaş Beyoğlu 2

February 21 Thursday, 7:30 PM AFM Budak Caddebostan

February 29 Friday, 7:00 PM AFM CEPA Ankara 2

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