Bangkok Screening Room

After showing two of Pen-ek Ratanaruang's films last year, 6ixtynin9 (เรื่องตลก 69) and Fun Bar Karaoke (ฝันบ้าคาราโอเกะ), Bangkok Screening Room is now showing a third, Ploy (พลอย). Ploy opened on Boxing day, and will be shown on 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, 10th, 12, and 14th January. The screenings coincide with Cinema Journey 20 ปี ภาพยนตร์เป็นเอก, a retrospective celebrating Pen-ek's twenty-year career as a director. His other films include Nymph (นางไม้), Headshot (ฝนตกขึ้นฟ้า), and Paradoxocracy (ประชาธิป'ไทย).

I interviewed Pen-ek in 2014, and he discussed the censorship of Ploy ("the cinemas were crawling with police!"), though he also said that he regarded it as his best film: "It's one of the rare films that I can actually achieve something closer to what I aimed at. Normally, you aim here [holds hand up high] but you achieve here [holds hand down low], but nobody knows. I think Ploy was actually the film that I liked the most."