“Ballad of a Small Participant” is director Edward Berger’s third film in 4 years. The primary two, “All Quiet on the Western Entrance” and “Conclave” earned 17 Oscar nominations between them, together with greatest image nods for each.
You’d suppose that will make “Ballad of a Small Participant” one thing of an occasion or, on the very least, eagerly anticipated by individuals who get pleasure from motion pictures with a simple directorial model, eager consideration to manufacturing and costume design and the form of booming rating that may spike your tinnitus for days after you permit the theater.
And people Berger hallmarks are definitely on show within the new one, a drama a few dandy named Lord Doyle, a down-and-out con man and playing addict on the point of a breakdown within the kitschy gaming hub of Macau. What’s lacking, crucially, is a motive for the viewers to care about this narcissist, regardless that Colin Farrell employs each trick in his performing arsenal to win you over. And if Farrell, an actor I’d observe nearly anyplace (besides maybe historical Macedonia), can’t make you’re feeling for this man, you realize “Ballad” has issues which can be in depth as the great lord’s unpaid resort invoice.
We first see Doyle, whose title, as you’d most likely guess, is self-bequeathed, by a mirrored image off his stainless-steel room service tray. (Mirror photos are employed typically within the movie.) Doyle’s opulent Macau resort suite is in disarray and he isn’t in a lot better form. However there’s work to be executed, so he places on his inexperienced velvet go well with, his fortunate Savile Row gloves and tries to recollect the place he stashed his one final roll of payments. In a voice-over, Doyle tells us he’s a “excessive curler on a slippery slope.”
“Right here, I barely exist,” he continues, calling himself a gweilo, a Cantonese time period for a international ghost cloaked in invisibility. “Right here, I may be whoever I wish to be.”
Doyle is clearly delusional. Cloaked in invisibility? This peacock stands out even in Macau, a metropolis that embraces garishness virtually as a lot because it does gentle air pollution.
Berger performs the opening part of the movie as farce, however then switches the tone, seeming to comprehend that he doesn’t have the ability or curiosity in heightened comedy. He’s extra snug taking part in it massive and attempting to create an operatic drama a few determined man, consumed by greed and a gnawing starvation that has rotted his soul, in search of one final rating. It’s a film we’ve seen numerous instances, although not in Macau, and Berger banks on the placement to create shiny, stylized photos which may distract you from the acquainted vacancy of the story.
For a second, it appears Doyle’s luck would possibly change when he meets Dao Ming (Fala Chen), a on line casino worker whose job is to increase strains of credit score to addicts like Doyle, enabling them to fall much more deeply into debt. However her coronary heart isn’t in her work and for causes we by no means purchase, she takes pity on Doyle, recognizing in him a “misplaced soul.”
“It’s by no means too late to vary,” she tells him. (Has she seen his resort room?) “Ballad,” written by Rowan Joffé, adapting Lawrence Osborne’s vivid 2014 novel, depicts Dao Ming as a fellow ghost, although in her case, the excellence is perhaps fairly literal. The film retains you guessing on that depend, as did the e book.
There’s an extra girl in Doyle’s life, Cynthia Blithe (Tilda Swinton), a visitor staying at his resort who he spies taking his image for causes Doyle can solely assume aren’t good. She’s one other character with a slippery identification and Swinton, all the time entertaining, has some enjoyable together with her, embracing the film’s over-the-top aesthetic by donning kooky pink eyeglasses and sporting an electroshock coiffure.
With “All Quiet on the Western Entrance” and “Conclave,” Berger confirmed himself to be a canny crowdpleaser, able to leaping genres and drawing out fantastic work from his leads. Right here, he appears as misplaced within the shiny lights as Doyle, piling on disorienting digital camera angles and an overcooked sound design to create an unfocused fever dream about particular person extra that exhausts the humanity from its story. It’s an overload of overkill, but as tedious and empty because the final day of a 72-hour journey to Vegas when the novelty has worn off and also you simply wish to go dwelling and sleep.
