Pen-ek Ratanaruang’s latest (Invisible Waves, Last Life In the Universe) film is a rich cinematographic puzzle (without edges and a few extra pieces you may never use), framing plural lives and the vague and thin interplay among them. An absurd, double-narrative, and two-dimensional film — one which enjoys interjecting the narratives in proper post-modern fashion — Ploy (also the name of one of the characters) explores the intersects among seemingly disparate lives.
These intersections become increasingly evident, not only in the film but in the relationships we must imagine, for reasons of continuity and also because the film’s ambiguity demands it. Through well-employed cuts, sharp minimalism in imagery and extreme minimalism in dialogue, the audience is left to infer a lot of the story. One such question is how a couple that isn’t talking will reconcile the presence of a complete stranger in their bedroom; another question is how two lovers will reconcile their lives after seven years of marriage. The audience sticks it out because we’re all too curious about what happens next! We wonder, what’s happening, why aren’t these people talking and, omg, what’s with the hour -long sex scene? This, in its extreme vagueness, has a way of both employing, intriguing, but also harassing the audience — aside from those who are bored to tears and, given their imaginations, flocked out of the theatre.
For those curious about more details, the film begins with four narratives: (1) that of a couple (Wit and Dang); (2) that of a young girl who awaits her mother; and that (3) of a nursemaid for the hotel; and lastly, that of (4) the nameless and non-verbal bartender. The latter two never speak in the film — if I’m not mistaken — and are almost entirely framed in a sensual innuendo that spans two-thirds of the film. They encounter each other in a hotel room — one which we come to learn is arranged by them in advance somehow. All this whilst the former two affect each in an imaginative triangle lived out in the mind of the wife: where the appearance of promiscuity drives a lover into madness and escape. The film ends with a seeming reconciliation of the couple that suggests a dismissal, or an absence, of the pivotal tragic scenes that give the film its desperate conclusion.
PICTURE CREDIT: VIFF Picture Database. Used With Permission.
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