Ploy (film)

The death of a relative brings a Thai-American couple, Wit and Dang, back to Bangkok for the first time in many years. Arriving at Bangkok's Suvarnabhumi Airport at around 5 a.m., they check into a hotel in the city. Suffering from jet lag, Dang wants to sleep, but her husband Wit is restless and heads down to the hotel bar to buy some cigarettes. While unpacking their luggage, Dang finds a small paper with a phone number of a woman named Noy, and she is immediately suspicious.

In the hotel bar, Wit meets Ploy, a young woman who says she is waiting for her mother to arrive from Stockholm. The two bond over coffee and cigarettes, and Wit then invites Ploy to come up to the hotel room, where she can take a shower and rest while she awaits her mother. Up at the room, Dang opens the door and sees Ploy. To the girl, Dang is pleasant and friendly, but to her husband, she is seething with anger and jealousy. She has bouts of suspicion, followed by hallucinations / nightmares. Fitfully, the three people try to sleep. Dang and Wit discuss their seven-year marriage, and wonder why the love has gone out of it.

Meanwhile, a hotel maid, Tum, has stolen a guest's suit from the hotel's dry cleaners. She takes it up to room 609 and hangs it in the closet. Nut, the silent, weary bartender, enters the room and puts on the suit. He then finds Tum hiding in the shower, and proceeds to kiss her and caress her, and the couple starts having a sexual relationship.

Back in Wit and Dang's room, Dang becomes more upset, and decides to leave. Wit wakes up to find Dang gone, and then he and Ploy sit and smoke cigarettes and talk about love and relationships. They discuss how married life begins to lose its sheen eventually and think of options to keep the flame lit. At one point, Ploy mentions that she had a dream about the entire episode of the hotel maid and the bartender, which makes the viewer realize it was only a dream.

Ploy eventually leaves the hotel room, when Wit falls asleep. Out of curiosity, she examines the room in which she dreamt that the maid and the bartender had sex.

Dang finds a coffee shop, where she takes a seat with a cup of coffee and pours some vodka in it from a small bottle she took from her hotel room's mini-bar. She is noticed by Moo, who is using his laptop computer. He recognizes Dang from her days as a famous television soap opera actress and invites her back to his home for some more drinks. Dang, who has already had quite a bit to drink, eventually throws up. Moo, spikes her last drink and tries to get closer to her. When Dang turns down his advances, he attacks and rapes her, although she puts up a fight. When Dang's life is in danger, they end up playing a game of hide and seek that would end with one of them dead. Given the previous storyline that turned out to be a dream, the viewer is left with uncertainty about what is a dream, and what is reality.

The movie shifts to a scene with Wit and Dang at the funeral, and viewers are left to adjust their view as they surmise that Wit had only dreamed this hostile plot line. The film ends with Wit and Dang leaving Thailand, as Dang says nothing about her ugly encounter with the rapist, Moo; when Wit sees her back at the hotel, he is happy to have Dang back with him. He places his hand over Dang's in the taxi, and sincerely tells her he loves her, which she had earlier expressed longing to hear. Dang smiles, and rests her head on Wit's shoulder lovingly as they exit Thailand to return to their home in the United States.

• Lalita Panyopas as Dang: A former actress, still recognized and well known in Thailand, she has been married for seven years to Wit.
• Pornwut Sarasin as Wit: A Thai restaurateur who's lived in the United States for a number of years, and was widowed when he met Dang.
• Apinya Sakuljaroensuk as Ploy: A teenage woman with an Afro, she says she is 19 years old and is waiting for her mother to arrive from Stockholm. She has a black eye. Wit first spots her in the hotel bar with a young man who's passed out at a table, whom Wit assumes is Ploy's boyfriend.
• Porntip Papanai as Tum: A hotel maid who steals a customer's suit from the hotel dry cleaners.
• Ananda Everingham as Nut: The weary, silent bartender, he meets Tum in room 609, puts on the suit she stole and engages in erotic role-playing with Tum.
• Thaksakorn Pradabpongsa as Moo: An antique dealer who meets Dang in a coffee shop, invites her to his apartment for drinks and eventually rapes her.

Director Pen-Ek Ratanaruang said he was inspired to write the screenplay after talking with a relative who had returned to Bangkok after some years in the United States. "My cousin had a restaurant in the U.S. and one day she came back to Thailand for a funeral," Pen-Ek said. "But she didn't have a home here, so she had to stay in a hotel. I met her at the funeral and it struck me as rather odd that this Thai person had to stay in a hotel room when she came to Thailand. It inspired me to start writing a script about a Thai couple in a hotel room."^[7]

The film's proposal was submitted in 2006 to the Pusan Promotion Plan at the Pusan International Film Festival.^[8] Budgeted at around US$2 million,^[1][9] principal photography began in February 2007 in Bangkok. The locations included hotels and restaurants along Sukhumvit Road, as well as Suvarnabhumi Airport, making Ploy the first Thai feature film to feature Bangkok's new international airport. "Most of the action takes place in a hotel room. So we built our own room on the rooftop of a hotel, and it looks exactly like a real hotel room," Pen-Ek said in the film's production notes.^[7]

In March 2007, the Hong Kong/Amsterdam-based film financing and distribution company, Fortissimo Films, announced it would be executive producer of the film along with Thailand's Five Star Production. Fortissimo takes care of international sales for the film, while Five Star handles distribution in Thailand.^[9]

From the start, producers sought to make Ploy a smaller-scale film than Pen-Ek's previous two films, Last Life in the Universe and Invisible Waves, which "were high-budget productions with international collaboration," said executive producer Chareon Iamphungporn.^[7] The previous two films had also been scripted or co-scripted by Thai writer Prabda Yoon. Chareon said he wanted Pen-Ek to return to his screenwriter-director roots and "come up with a project that had the personal warmth of his early films like 6ixtynin9 and Monrak Transistor."^[7]

The film reunited Pen-Ek with Thai cinematographer Chankit Chamnivikaipong, who had photographed his first three films, Fun Bar Karaoke, 6ixtynin9 and Monrak Transistor, before Pen-Ek collaborated with Christopher Doyle on Last Life in the Universe and Invisible Waves.

Ploy was a reunion for Pen-Ek and actress Lalita Panyopas, who is well known in Thailand for her roles in soap operas and a string of films in the 1980s. She starred in Pen-Ek's 1999 crime comedy-drama 6ixtynin9.

Pornwut Sarasin, who portrays the husband Wit, was a first-time actor. Forty-eight years old at the time of shooting, he is a vice president for Thai Namthip, the distributor of Coca-Cola in Thailand, and is well known in Thai high-society circles.

Ananda Everingham, who plays Nut the bartender, had worked with Pen-ek on a short film Twelve Twenty, commissioned for the 2006 Jeonju International Film Festival. He shares erotic scenes with model-actress Porntip Papanai, who plays the maid, Tum. She had a major role in Pen-ek's 2001 musical-comedy, Monrak Transistor, portraying the singer, Dao.

For the title character, Ploy, Pen-Ek chose Apinya Sakulcharoensuk, who was 16 years old at the time of shooting. "She's a godsend," the director said of the actress. "It's as if I could sense that the Ploy character is out there somewhere in the real world, and then she materializes in the form of this girl. Apinya was born to be Ploy."

Apinya had her hair styled into an Afro, a decision made by costume designer Visa Khongka, to make the character of Ploy look older and unique.^[7]