25/09/2025 - The spectacular Asian locations in the new film by the director of Conclave prove more compelling than its intricate yet hollow plot, starring a committed Colin Farrell

The excessive, dazzling Macao is not merely another character in Ballad of a Small Player [+see also:
trailer
film profile]: the Asian city dominates the screen, swallowing all the power that Edward Berger's film might exude. Berger Oscar-winning director of All Quiet On The Western Front [+see also:
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interview: Edward Berger
film profile] and Conclave [+see also:
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interview: Red Carpet @ European Film …
film profile], returns to the San Sebastián International Film Festival, with his latest work, presented in competition at the festival’s 73rd edition.

It tells the story of Lord Doyle, a con artist and gambling addict (played by a determined Colin Farrell doing his best to rescue a character drained of empathy) who never stops gambling in the glitzy casinos of Asia’s Las Vegas. Crushed by debt, he crosses paths with a mysterious woman who will change his life (played by Chinese actress Fala Chen), while another (a histrionic Tilda Swinton, playing a role she does not seem to believe in) pursues him to collect on one of his many outstanding debts.

Saturated with intensely abrasive colours courtesy of cinematographer James Friend, Ballad of a Small Player dangerously resembles summer fireworks or a disco ball. Underpinned by an epic, operatic and impertinently invasive soundtrack by Volker Bertelmann, who seems to have invoked his compatriot Richard Wagner when composing it, the film is based on the 2014 novel Ballad of a Small Player, written by Bangkok-based British journalist Lawrence Osborne and adapted for the screen by Rowan Joffe. With a certain existential aura, the film relentlessly follows a character lost in the luminous baroque of a modern world where material things mean everything.

The real problem lies, however, in the tone of the film, which veers between excess, build-up and parody, with a central character as erratic as the narrative itself, it leaves viewers as confused as they are overwhelmed. Wandering through this majestic yet kitsch Macao does little to captivate the audience beyond, as noted above, its photogenic locations.

Despite its attempt to weave a discourse on spirituality, against ambition and materialism, capped with an ending of redemption and salvation, Ballad of a Small Player ends up being a noisy clash of elements that never quite harmonise. It plays like an imitation of the jittery editing and self-indulgent shots of Martin Scorsese's Casino, drenched in an oversaturated colour scheme of the oft-copied Wong Kar Wai's cinema, and the antics of a large, vacuous puppet show posing as transcendence — ultimately nothing more than a succession of flashy images, excessive glitter and an exhausting scurry of characters on the verge of an attack of vagueness.

Ballad of a Small Player is produced by Good Chaos (United Kingdom), Nine Hours (Germany) and Stigma Films (United Kingdom) for Netflix, which will premiere on 29 October.

(Translated from Spanish)