We’re easy-to-please folks, honestly (we’re not simple, mind you) — all you have to do is say “Colin Farrell and Tilda Swinton are in a gambling thriller,” and we’re there day one. Hell, perhaps we’re even at the world premiere. That film is Edward Berger’s Ballad of a Small Player, which is about as far away from the worlds of the Western Front or a Papal Conclave as you can possibly get. Sadly, there probably won’t be a bunch of good Conclave-like memes coming out of this one, as far as we can tell from the teaser that Netflix dropped earlier on Tuesday.
Peep it:
Here’s a synopsis for Ballad of a Small Player, courtesy of the TIFF50 program:
“Brimming with mystery and awash in atmospherics, this seductive character study from Oscar-winning director Edward Berger (‘Conclave,’ TIFF ’24) stars Oscar nominee Colin Farrell as a travelling gambler and Oscar winner Tilda Swinton as the dogged detective determined to track him down.
In his green velvet suit and kid gloves, with his pencil moustache and posh accent, Lord Freddy Doyle (Farrell) plays the part of the international high roller, living the lush life at a luxury hotel in Macao. But a closer look suggests Doyle’s situation is more desperate than it appears. He’s behind on his room payments, can’t find a casino that will give him credit, and he’s deep in debt to a dubious local character. Doyle came to Macao because here, as a “foreign ghost” who no one knows, he can reinvent himself. But Cynthia Blithe (Swinton) knows who he really is — and what he’s running from. A sympathetic casino hostess (Fala Chen, also at the Festival in ‘Lucky Lu’) may be able to help Doyle escape his mounting problems. But is there anywhere left for him to go?
Adapted from Lawrence Osborne’s 2014 novel by Rowan Joffe (‘Before I Go to Sleep’), ‘Ballad of a Small Player’ hovers enticingly on the frontier between realism and dream. Reuniting with his Oscar-winning ‘All Quiet On the Western Front’ cinematographer James Friend, Berger captures his settings in an array of startling colours and textures. But the most alluring is easily Farrell, whose face and gestures gradually reveal the contours of Doyle’s lost soul, taking us on a haunting journey of addiction and possible redemption.”
Ballad of a Small Player will have its world premiere at TIFF on September 8. After that, it’ll make its way to a theater near you on October 15, before heading onward to its final destination — Netflix, where it will stream for subscribers on October 29.