Writer: Rowan Joffe
Director: Edward Berger
Addiction is haunting, a ghost that attaches itself to any individual who must try to exorcise it, certainly in Edward Berger’s new film written by Rowan Joffe, Ballad of a Small Player screening at the BFI London Film Festival 2025. Set in Macau and giving a gorgeous vibrancy in Zoe Lee Tak-Nga’s art direction, the depiction of excessive luxury is immersively created as the central character, a gambling English lord, makes his way through casinos, hotels and the light and spectacle-laden streets of tourist Macau. Staged as a modern morality tale, Joff and Berger’s film explores the price and cost of gambling, and whether the money is worth the chunk of soul it ultimately demands.
Lord Doyle is on a major losing streak, playing cards night after night in some of the most intense casinos in Macau. Pursued for hotel bills and debts, he meets hostess Dao Ming who tries to give him the confidence to escape but Doyle’s addiction, his belief that he is one big win away from turning his life around takes him to darker extremes until an unexpected arrival from England forces him to reconcile his past.
Ballad of a Small Player is one of the most visually striking films at the Festival and after Sam Mendes bought Macau a level of cinematic beauty in Skyfall a decade or so ago, Berger’s camera lingers on the nightlife. Everything is luminous, from the water features and neon that adorn almost every public space to the fireworks and beautifully lit Chinese cultural and faith symbols readied for a festival of ghosts that provides the backdrop to the conclusion. James Friend’s cinematography is glorious, rich and exciting, even in the modest block of flats where Dao Ming lives, all underscored by the addictive luxury of Doyle’s sensory lifestyle. Later in the film, in a moment of stark clarity, the stunning skyline becomes grey and unremarkable in the daylight, foregrounded by s sludgy beach where the tide has gone out, a clear metaphor for Doyle’s trajectory.
Tonally, the film does meander, the intensity of gambling, particularly card games, plays well on screen and becomes the most exciting part of the story, but the retreat to a houseboat is less engaging, although important to the plot, and the arrival of Tilda Swinton’s debt collector never quiet takes root, her zany costume and style at odds with the ordinariness of her northern accent and the small, insubstantial woman she is meant to be. With a focus on Colin Farrell’s Doyle and his secrets, the relationship with Swinton’s Cynthia is vastly undercooked, little more than a cameo in fact, and not used to sufficiently pressure Doyle or add the cat and mouse element the film aspires to.
Farrell’s career is going from strength to strength, becoming one of the few performers where you really should see everything he does. Here, the dual identity he represents, the rising panic and gambler’s confidence creates lots of nice contrasts in the layered reality of Doyle, a man fooling himself fooling others. Joffe and Berger get a little lost in trying to tell too many substories that lead to dead ends but Farrell’s portrayal of a haunted man is well worth seeing.
Ballad of a Small Player is screening at the BFI London Film Festival 2025 from 8-19 October.
