Ballad of a Small Player - Review 

Rating: 3.5 out of 5

EDWARD Berger’s Ballad of a Small Player, his follow-up to Conclave, may be a bit of a gamble for viewers who like their films to be neatly packaged.

But while far from perfect, and sometimes frustratingly ambiguous, there is much to admire.

It boasts another terrific lead performance from the ever dependable Colin Farrell, some eye-catching support from the similarly reliable Tilda Swinton and Chinese-American actress and singer Fala Chen, some stunning cinematography, and a storyline that genuinely intrigues.

Adapted from the 2014 novel by Lawrence Osborne by Rowan Joffe, the story follows a professional gambler, the self-styled Lord Doyle (Farrell), who finds himself adrift in the Chinese gambling mecca of Macau, the Asian Vegas… a “gweilo” or foreign ghost, currently down on his luck and in the midst of a seemingly irrecoverable debt spiral.

Convinced that the law of averages dictates his unlucky streak will end, the baccarat playing gambler seeks a final shot at redemption by inviting moneylender Dao Ming (Chen) to credit him, on the promise that any victory will also see him pay off her assumed debt.

But Ming has also been rocked by the suicide she recently witnessed, and feels responsible for, and so seems initially reluctant - even though she befriends Lord Doyle, before disappearing and seemingly giving him the means to begin his redemption or destruction.

Berger positions his film somewhere between the spiritual and the commercial, deliberating blurring the line between life and death, and what is real and what is imagined.

The action itself takes place around the Festival of the Hungry Ghosts, where residents burn offerings for the dead (the film was shot at the tail end of the actual festival), and there’s a sustained suspicion that both Doyle and Ming are, indeed, spirits - with Doyle himself destined to remain the type of ‘hungry ghost’, always gobbling and never sated, referenced during an earlier dissection of the belief systems informing the surrounding culture.

It’s left for viewers to decide on the conclusion of this: whether one or both are spirits. For me, they both are, with Macau serving as some sort of purgatory… a gateway between heaven and hell and the redemption or destruction awaiting Doyle in particular.

The deliberate use of colour (Doyle wears a green jacket before the suicide and is frequently in red thereafter) also seems symbolic, as does the positioning of certain characters: Deanie Ip’s formidable baccarat player Grandma, with her barber tongue and constant temptations, could represent the Devil, while Swinton’s debt collector Betty seems deliberately OTT (her hairstyle reminiscent, perhaps, of the elderly woman Doyle robbed, her presence perhaps representative of Doyle’s conscience).

Macau itself, meanwhile, has the feeling of a soulless Mecca; a place of excess, where debt is invited and encouraged. Could this be more widely representative of the state of the world and of capitalism in general? It also has something to say about addiction: its desperations, its cruelties and society’s role in feeding it (while remaining intolerant of it).

Like I said, there’s much to dissect and Berger would probably answer that there is no right or wrong answer.

His film may therefore annoy more people than it satisfies, while the unscrupulous nature of its characters, as well as their addictive personalities, can make it feel somewhat cold and more of an exercise in style over substance.

But Farrell works hard to ensure Doyle retains an element of humanity, particularly when things become increasingly feverish late on, while Ming offers the undoubted heart and soul of the film and makes the most of her limited screen time.

Ballad of a Small Player is therefore a consistently watchable affair: provocative, unsettling, ambiguous and yet always gripping. It’s a gamble, for sure, but one that holds many aces up its sleeve.

Certificate: 15

Running time: 1hr 41mins