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Ploy is an artsy Thai relationship film by Bpen-ake Ratana-ruang เป็นเอก รัตนาเรือง starring Lolita Bpun-yo-paat ลลิตา ปัญโญภาส (Dang), Pornwit Sarasin พรวิฒ์ สารสิน (Wit), Apinya Sagoon-jarern-sook อภิญญา สกุลเจริญสุข (Ploy), Tuck-sagorn Bpradup-poang-sa (Mhoo), Ananda Everingham อนันดา เอเวอร์ริ่งแฮม (bartender) and Pornthip Bpaa-bpa-nai พรทิพย์ ปาปะนัย (Maid).

The film starts out with 7 year betrothed US-based Thai couple, Dang and Wit, arriving in Bangkok on a late night flight from the USA. The exhausted couple check into a hotel hoping to get some rest before attending a relative�s funeral, the reason for which they came back to Thailand.

Still in the wee hours, Wit finds himself unable to sleep and goes down to the hotel lobby to buy cigarettes. He ends up sitting at the bar for coffee and few smokes, where he is acquainted with Ploy, a poofy haired, wide-eyed light skinned cute teenager, who engages Wit in small talk after ploy asks Wit for a cigarette. Over the next coffee and smoke, Ploy relays that she is waiting to meet her mom in several hours who coming from over seas. Wit invites the innocent yet provocative young girl to wash up and take a rest in his room.

When the two arrive to his room, Wit knocks on the door to which Dang opens, surprised to see what her husband has brought up. On sight of the young, strange, and sexy girl to which her husband has offered shelter to for the morning, seeds of jealousy began to germinate and soon sprout erupting into argument between Dang and Wit, revealing a few dust bugs in the relationship.

All the while, the movie jumps back and forth between the main plot and scenes of an intimate encounter between the hotel bar tender and a maid, which escalates inside a vacant hotel room. One may initially be left wandering when a dialogue would develop and somehow connect such love scenes to the main story, but so it is, these two were hired specifically for enacting a passionate sexual encounter for contrasting purposes�between the urgency to communicate with only bodies of one young couple and the staleness and tension of the main couple strung up webs of words and insecurity.

Back in the main hotel room, Dang confronts Wit about a female�s phone number, trust issues are exposed and we learn that Dang and Wit haven�t been sexually intimate for over a year. The argument leads to Dang leaving the room angry, where she heads to the hotel restaurant armed with min-bar shooters which she spikes in her coffee. She is soon acquainted with a guy at a nearby table and a dialogue develops. Meanwhile Ploy and Wit, alone in the room continue their own dialogue�

This is where the director attempts to create a sense of suspense, leaving the viewer guessing where the dialogues will lead the estranged couple, each with their own new acquaintances in vulnerable situations.

Reading somewhere that this was to be a great film�international film festival worthy, etc. etc., I can�t say my expectations were fully met. In this, I mean to say that it isn�t a film that is calling for me to watch over and over again, though there were a few things thrown in that call for me to give it a second viewing. Some aspects and concepts of the film seem to have thought provoking influence�mostly about relationships, commitment, passion, lust, fantasy, things taken for granted, and all the lolly-lahs of this sort.

Popularity: 12% [?]

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