Ploy (2007) User Reviews

A sly and sexy low-key thriller

[saareman · 8/10 · 17 September 2007]

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.

it's really touching

[snook_edbe14 · 8/10 · 24 June 2007]

DUdeeeeeeee, i saw it today. I'm Thai, and i have to say that there are tons of crappy Thai movies out there. Of course,Thailand doesn't have such a big motion picture industry and most of the movies that make money here are usually retarded comedy movies or blockbuster blasts like war of the worlds or the incredibles. There are many GOOD movies came out here and don't make money at all or released limitedly such as MAgnolia, crash, babel, stay, 21 grams, stuff like that. Ploy fell into the same category with the above list. Ploy didn't make money. Ploy is actually one of the best Thai movies i've seen in a long time. it's good. it's got good story, good dialog (maybe not so good on subtitled, but if you understand Thai the dialog was actually pretty great). The directing was very very slowly but very moving anyhow. i personally love this movie. one of the reasons is because it's totally alienated from the typical Thai ghost, comedy movies. Ploy is really touching. I'm not going out with anyone now but this movie really made me think about 'LOVE' and relationships. There are a lot of changes i would like to make after i finished watching Ploy,but Ploy still made me feel like it wasn't a waste of time and money. It really will get you to think. Give it a try.

A Stylish Meditation on Marriage

[atlasmb · 6/10 · 31 October 2013]

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.

never-never land of jet lag and an unfamiliar room

[christopher-underwood · 10/10 · 27 October 2007]

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.

Not bad, but not as appealing as director Ratanaruang's other movies

[harry_tk_yung · 22 March 2008]

Thailand's popular director Pen-Ek Ratanaruang is a favourite of the Hong Kong International Film Festival. My first exposure to his work was the commercial, black-humour crime piece "Sixty nine" (1999). "Last life in the universe" (2003), probably the most acclaimed of his work, is decidedly art-house. "Invisible waves" (2006) is mainly artsy but is also blended with commercial thriller elements. "Ploy" follows the same approach, but ends up being a little bit of neither here nor there.

The story takes place mostly in a hotel in Thailand, in two rooms, to be exact. One is occupied by a middle-aged couple Nut, a restaurant owner and Daeng, an ex-movie star, immigrants in the US for a decade, coming home to attend a funeral. Right away, the audience is intimated to the situation that the 7-year marriage has problems. In the wee hours of the morning, having coffee and cigarette in the hotel's café to kill time, Nut has a chance encounter with to-be-19-tomorrow, rebellious-looking but sweet-at-heart Ploy, waiting for her mother's arrival, in a few hours' time, from Sweden. A decent and kind fellow, Daeng offers to let the girl freshen up and take a nap in his room until the mother arrives. You can imagine how much a clever director can do with this material – the trio stuck in a room for a few hours.

In the other room, a few steps down the hall, a chambermaid and a bartender, both presumably off duty, are making out. I'll come back to that.

In Pen-Ek Ratanaruang's famous (some would say notorious) slow-burn style, the marital problems of the two is revealed, culminating in the wife walking out. What follows is a scene not unlike what you saw with Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson lying in bed in "Lost in translation", similar, maybe even more innocent. After Ploy has left the scene, having served as the catalyst that brings to the surface the marital problem, we see how it is finally resolved, through a thriller-type development of events. Happy ending.

Coming back to the other room, as I watched the continually escalating erotic scenes that don't seem to have anything to do with the main plot, I couldn't help but wonder if they were just put there for commercial reasons. It was in the final absurdity, ironically, that I saw (or think I saw) some senses of what director Ratanaruang was doing. After the bartender has left, the maid, tying in bed, suddenly burst out in a sensuous, joyful song oozing with the joy she experiences after a satisfying sexual experience. This scene in the other room, then, is there to serve as a sharp contrast to accentuate even more the frustration in Nut and Daeng's marriage.

"Ploy" is not such a bad movie, but is less appealing than Ratanaruang's other movies mentioned about. It is well acted and touched a few things for empathy. The girl in the title role is very sweet.

Brilliant!

[wiseman-4 · 10/10 · 19 November 2007]

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.

Confused and confusing

[matthewjsandoval · 5/10 · 9 September 2021]

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.

an exciting return for the director

[andreirublev · 10/10 · 8 October 2007]

The sense of universality in a marital drama can be difficulty to accomplish. Take a few famous examples from the pantheon: Rossellini's Viaggio in Italia, Antonioni's La Notte, Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut, and dare I say, Cronenberg's Crash. As a civilized treatment of an eternal human condition, Ploy comes quite close for joining their rank. Pen-ek Ratanurang should be lauded for curbing his incomprehensible tendency to include gangster subplots in a relationship drama (however much they signify the characters' internal struggles). While we still cannot avoid sudden acts of violence, they are kept to a minimum, and as you may find out (as I did), they are quite tolerable. Despite minor hiccups, Ploy should be noted for its superb illustration of the lackadaisical mental states caused by jet lag. The cinematography is nothing less than stunning - using space and depth to their full sensuous effect. Adding to the elegant atmosphere is the script: economical, precise, and at the same time general enough to be universally appealing. In the film's final moments, the viewers may feel relieved (as I did) that so many things could have gone wrong, but they didn't - or did they? In any case, they have little influence to prevent Ploy from becoming one of the best films ever made about marriage.