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 (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).
Interviewed for the forthcoming book
Thai Cinema Uncensored, Pen-ek 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.”