Edward Berger<\/a>\u2019s polar-opposite follow-up to last year\u2019s \u201cConclave\u201d is also the polar opposite of movies that it would seem to resemble: films like \u201cLeaving Las Vegas,\u201d \u201cUnder the Volcano\u201d and \u201cUncut Gems,\u201d where desperate men (always men) burn the fuse right down to the quick. Farrell\u2019s character calls himself Lord Freddy Doyle, though in fact, he\u2019s little more than a fraud, spending other people\u2019s money in pursuit of whatever thrill winning gives. But it\u2019s not winning this man wants. It\u2019s easy come, easy go where money\u2019s concerned. Doyle is motivated by the fear of complete financial ruin and whatever consequences that might bring.<\/p>\n\n\tThe locals call guys like this \u201cgweilo,\u201d or ghosts, which doesn\u2019t feel quite right for Doyle, who\u2019s anything but invisible, striding through town in his bespoke burgundy suit, neatly tied ascot and bright yellow gloves. This conspicuous foreigner looks like a cross between Quentin Crisp and a 1970s Harlem pimp. He doesn\u2019t exactly blend in \u2014 although, to be fair, it takes a lot to compete with the garish neon casinos that rise up about him like the debauched skyline of Rouge City in Spielberg\u2019s \u201cA.I. Artificial Intelligence.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cLord\u201d Doyle is what we might call a cad. He believes that a man can reinvent himself in Macau, but his past keeps catching up with him. That\u2019s what the private detective with the cheap shoes and designer spectacles, who calls herself Betty but is really named Cynthia Blithe (that would be Swinton), serves to remind. She\u2019s there to collect something like a million pounds, which Doyle owes her client. He has practically none to his name, but if she\u2019ll just spot him 500 quid, he can turn it into enough to square his debts (well, some of them, at least).<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cHow \u2019bout dinner and a dance?\u201d he says. \u201cWe can come to some kind of arrangement.\u201d Blithe obliges, and sure enough, like some kind of magician, Doyle starts winning. But he\u2019s still a long way from a million, and Blithe (who doesn\u2019t look like any detective we\u2019ve seen before) gives him 24 hours. For a so-called small player like this, deadlines don\u2019t mean much. Everything\u2019s negotiable. And so the movie becomes increasingly tiresome, watching Farrell oscillate from low to high, as DP James Friend shoves his high-def camera right up in his pores, or else shoots the actor from halfway across town, so he\u2019s nothing but a tiny speck in a world of excess.<\/p>\n
\n\tAdapted from the book by Lawrence Osborne, \u201cBallad of a Small Player\u201d should feel like a film noir (Doyle could be lifted from one of Graham Greene\u2019s novels), but Berger takes it in the other direction. Visually, it\u2019s a stunning, vibrant film, as detailed and decadent as Paolo Sorrentino\u2019s \u201cThe Great Beauty,\u201d with the colors narrowed to a Wong Kar Wai palette. Hong Kong is just a stone\u2019s throw away, after all, though Doyle is persona non grata there. He\u2019s run out of options, having exhausted his credit at even the Rainbow Casino, where a filthy-mouthed grandma (Deanie Ip) wipes him clean at baccarat.<\/p>\n
\n\tEnter the movie\u2019s loose equivalent of a femme fatale, Fala Chen (Dao Ming), who lends money to losers at exorbitant rates, but sees something in Doyle that, frankly, the rest of us don\u2019t. The two spend a night together by the shore, and Doyle awakens with numbers penned on his palm: a test of character that raises his already bombastic redemption\/self-immolation several notches higher. It\u2019s hard to follow how much of what\u2019s happening from here on is real, as Berger never really establishes how gravity works in this world.<\/p>\n
\n\tWe watch Doyle win his way back on top, but the roller coaster has gone off the rails by this point. One minute, he\u2019s having a heart attack, the next he\u2019s shoveling fistfuls of lobster into his face. It\u2019s no fault of Farrell\u2019s. The actor is fully committed to this anxious caricature of a man who doesn\u2019t know when to call it quits, but Doyle\u2019s psychology is all over the map. Compared with great portraits of people dominated by their gambling compulsion \u2014 \u201cBay of Angels,\u201d \u201cBob le Flambeur,\u201d \u201cMississippi Grind,\u201d \u201cThe Cooler\u201d \u2014 \u201cBallad of a Small Player\u201d looks great, but lacks the fundamental human insight to make it a winner.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When does a gambling habit become a gambling problem? Is it when you\u2019re down to your last wadded-up…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":35354,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[263],"tags":[13243,9442,18,117,19,17,327,25194,13245],"class_list":{"0":"post-35353","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-ballad-of-a-small-player","9":"tag-edward-berger","10":"tag-eire","11":"tag-entertainment","12":"tag-ie","13":"tag-ireland","14":"tag-movies","15":"tag-telluride-film-festival","16":"tag-toronto-film-festival"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35353","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35353"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35353\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35354"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35353"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35353"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35353"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}