3 Friends is an experimental fiction/documentary film conceived and directed by 3 friends. Aditya Assarat, Pumin Chinaradee, and Mingmongkol Sonakul came up with the idea to make a film that comments on the "movie star exploitation" films that are currently being made for the Thai market today. These films, which are mass-produced by large entertainment companies, aim to exploit the current hot movie star of the moment by purporting to make a "lifestyle" documentary about them at the beach, or hanging out with friends, or going about their everyday life, but done with the express purpose of showing a lot of skin. Thinking this was an interesting starting point, the three friends then contacted the movie star Nakaprapah Nakprasit (nicknamed Mamee), who is herself typecast as sex symbol from her films Mae Bia and Butterfly Man, and proposed this project to her. Tired from her busy schedule as an actress and model, Mamee wanted to take a vacation anyway… The film that resulted documents the weeklong vacation of Mamee and her two best friends, Yo and Belle. Planning on catching up on old times, the friends find out that it is not so easy to block out the realities of their lives in the city. As soon as they reach the island, problems arise and a feeling of disconnectedness descends on them. Nobody wants to sleep in the same room as Belle because she snores. Yo is only concerned with finding a phone signal so she can call her boyfriend back home. Meanwhile, left on her own, Mamee befriends a young Japanese student who is living on the island to do water research for his university degree. But they find themselves separated by language. 3 Friends was filmed completely without a script, all the dialogue, scenes, and conflicts arising out of the real-life situations of the three girls. In the end, the finished film is about many things. It is our own version of the "movie star exploitation" film, it is an experiment on the limits of the fiction and documentary forms, but most of all, it is a portrait of 3 friends on the edge of adulthood, growing up and apart in modern-day Thailand.
