Less a feature debut than a marked progression in a career of interdisciplinary video work, Prapat Jiwarangsan’s Ploy makes no attempts to distance itself from its creator’s tenure as an installation artist, even if it is in possession of an overarching narrative, and runs a comparatively hefty 51 minutes after a series of shorts that never surpassed 20. An impressive confluence of narrated testimony, painting, photo-roman, and patient master shots of urban and forested Singaporean landscapes, this mutable methodology is otherwise grounded by its source material, a chapter from Kon Glai Baan (Persons Far From Home) — a collection of 20 short stories written by Thai migrant workers outlining their experiences in Singapore — entitled “A sad record of a sex worker.” The story itself is the diary of Ploy (a nickname, we’re informed only a few minutes in), which is fractured across Jiwarangsan’s freeform essay film.
