After his mixed adventures in international co-productions, Pen-ek returns to a relatively small-scale Thai project--and comes up with one of the sexiest and most sardonic movies of the year. Wit and Dang, married for seven years, run a Thai restaurant in the States. They return to Bangkok for a funeral, and check into a luxury hotel at some ungodly hour of the morning. Wit goes down to buy some smokes and runs into a young woman with an Afro hairdo in the bar. She’s Ploy, waiting for her mother to fly in from Stockholm later that morning. Wit does something very provocative: he invites her up to Room 603 to rest until her mother arrives. Dang is not best pleased to find a nubile young stranger in her room, and the tensions slowly but surely spiral out of control. Meanwhile, in Room 609, a barman and a maid are role-playing a very wordless, very sexual encounter...

Inspired by all those nagging questions about marriage, non-marriage and promiscuity, Ploy is riven with dreams and fantasies (although, Pen-ek says, “in my mind, everything really happens”). It adds up to a persuasive argument for (a) truth in relationships, (b) fidelity, and (c) slow, sensual sex. Just wonderful.

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