‘Ballad of a Small Player’ Review: A Nothing Berger

Gambling is a solitary pursuit. You share the joy of winning with the world and shoulder the shame of loss alone. The highs are high, the lows are lower. It’s not you against the world, but you against the very laws of nature and the universe itself. And casinos are strange places, full of strange people. Windowless complexes, masking the passage of time in the world outside, intended to keep you awake while dulling your senses. Studies have shown that the blue light enriched screens of many casinos, already known to disrupt and delay sleep by suppressing melatonin production, may also reduce sensitivity to loss and increase receptivity to risk.

All this to say, casinos are designed with the sole intention of trapping and robbing you of your time and your money. 

I love gambling. And I love casinos. Probably for the very reasons stated above. There is a transportive quality to them, a purgatorial state of liminality between day and night, wake and sleep, past and future, heaven and hell, and for an unlucky few, life and death.

And in that regard, Macau is Mecca.

Edward Berger’s latest film, the metaphysical Ballad of a Small Player, played at TIFF this year and stars Colin Farrell as Lord Doyle, an alleged aristocratic gambler hiding out in Macau from an ambiguous past. He spends his days and nights drinking, eating and gambling, slowly drowning in climbing debt from a losing streak he just can’t seem to break. He tries to avoid paying off his hotel and casino credit bills and to evade a private investigator Cynthia (Tilda Swinton) sent from the UK to find him. He encounters Dao Ming (Fala Chen), a creditor also at the end of her rope, who lends money to equally unlucky gamblers, and sees her as his salvation.

Berger, who is coming off of hits like All Quiet on the Western Front and Conclave, is quickly emerging as a premier talent behind the camera. He was in contention to helm the new James Bond film and exited the role of directing Ocean’s 14. Instead of taking on established casino-infused franchises, he’s trying his hand at adapting Lawrence Osbourne’s novel The Ballad of a Small Player into film.

And Lord Doyle is no James Bond or Danny Ocean, and this is not a crime caper or espionage thriller. It’s a strange ambiguous mix of a casino (albeit very muted) thriller and possible ghost story? In some ways it reminded me of the work of Olivier Assayas (Keep an eye out for my future review of his new film The Wizard of The Kremlin, which I also caught at TIFF), who also plays with liminality, blurring the lines between reality and fantasy, life and death.

Farrell is no stranger to being trapped in Purgatory, so to speak. In many ways, his Lord Doyle here is a spiritual successor to his role as Ray in Martin McDonagh’s 2008 black comedy In Bruges. Both are men hiding out in beautiful cities they can’t seem to escape, haunted by their choices and desperate for a way out.

An easy comparison to make is Oscar Isaac as William Tell in Paul Schrader’s The Card Counter, another gambler with a self-constructed identity to mask a shameful past, who is given an unexpected shot at redemption. Both films feel like riffs on Bresson’s Pickpocket, men with compulsions who are potentially redeemed through the prospect of love in their lives.

All these factors led me to be incredibly excited for the film, seemingly checking off many of my own personal preferences. Which is why it hurts all the more. Maybe you can tell, but I’ve avoided going into much detail about how the film actually is overall, because unfortunately there isn’t that much to say about it. It has several interesting threads but they don’t lead to much overall. The performances are good but in service of not much happening. Its major narrative swing feels both predictable and like a backtracking that erases much of the film. Berger is clearly still a talented director, but I just don’t think he translates this novel into a compelling film.

The film’s major redeeming quality is how it looks visually, and man is it something.

The cinematography is done by James Friend, who won an Oscar for his work with Berger on All Quiet, the costume design is by Lisy Christl who was nominated for the same film, and the production design is by Jonathan Houlding, who contributed to the Oscar-winning design of Poor Things. Their work here is stunning, art, costuming and photography working hand in hand to create a garish and intentionally artificial look in the casino scenes. Incredibly lurid and borderline sickening its high contrast opulence. The city is beautifully draped in its neon lights. I was reminded of Wes Anderson’s work, heavily constructed and colourful palettes, but while Anderson’s work is usually muted in pastel tones, here it is rich and luxurious. By contrast, the scenes outside the casinos are beautiful and soft, Fala and Colin’s faces emanate a glow. It is genuinely one of the best movies compositionally this year.

But it’s a bluff. And all the while, a tinge of blue light in every scene to keep you interested.

But that’s life. And that’s TIFF. I love it for the same reasons I love casinos. It’s a gamble every year with every film. You do your research and take your pick, praying this is gonna be your big one. You sit in a windowless room free of time and responsibility, staring at the pretty lights and colours, fighting off weariness and sleep to escape for just one more film. Eventually your luck is gonna turn.

Ballad of a Small Player stars Colin Farrell, Fala Chen, Tilda Swinton, and more. The film will be released on Netflix on October 29th.

Thank you for reading our Ballad of a Small Player Review. For more, stay tuned here at Feature First.