Ballad of a Small Player | TIFF50

Ballad of a Small Player starts with a grand score and brightly coloured text letting you know what it's all about right from the start. We are immediately transported into a bright and technicolour Macao where Lord Freddy Doyle (Colin Farrell) is hedging bets and hiding from debt collectors. Farrell is sleek and slick as gambler Doyle, in his colourful suits and strange yellow gloves, constantly pursuing ubiquitous wins that will make his problems go away. Just beneath his projected slick and suave surface, Doyle is struggling, and everyone knows it.

Doyle meets many key characters along his journey, including Cynthia Blithe (Tilda Swinton), a private investigator seeking justice, as well as Dao Ming (Fala Chen) a casino hostess and money lender who empathizes with Doyle's struggles. The roles they play impact the trajectory of Doyle's journey significantly.

Farrell embodies the eccentric Doyle with a sense of care and intention that is always present in his work. The film itself grapples with addiction, greed and the parts lost along the way. Doyle is a lost soul seeking guidance, referred to in the film as a "foreign ghost". He is set on survival, working his way from Bacarrat table to Bacarrat table - seeking validation, relief, escape. The booming scores puts us right alongside Doyle in his anxiety and fear as the countdown clock looms. The cards have been pulled, but is his fate sealed?

Ballad of A Smaller Player ebbed and flowed between stark reality and dreamlike sequences - the audience, along with Doyle, unsteady and unmoored. The film asks us to ponder - what are the ghosts we carry with us? How do we let them go? What do they have to tell us about who we are and what we need?

While the themes of the film resonated, I found it lacked the depth of character study and plot that I was hoping for. Despite this, Farrell, Swinton and Chen shine in their respective roles. Visually, the film is expansive and engaging, with a bold and colourful visual style that transports you immediately into Doyle's psyche. Ballad of a Small Player is a wild ride from start to finish - but is the journey worthwhile? The answer to that question will be for audiences to decide.