Ballad of a Small Player

TIFF REVIEW: BY EDEN PROSSER

September 21, 2025

2.5 OUT OF 5 STARS

Fresh off the debut of not one, but two critical triumphs, Academy Award darling Edward Berger has returned to the TIFF stage. His latest effort: a neon-soaked tome of opulent excess, suave and stylistic in a manner perhaps not entirely explored by the auteur’s previous efforts. Spanning the skyscrapers of glittering Macau, the underbellies lurking beneath the gamblers, the cheats, Berger—backed by the infinitesimal freedom of a Netflix budget—guides his devotees towards the shadows of a majestic facade. Alas, despite the sweeping promise, Ballad of a Small Player swiftly sputters on, struggling to maintain the weakened hand of which it has been dealt.

To gaze upon a scene from Ballad is to find oneself transfixed by cinematographic mastery. While Berger’s 2024 premiere, Conclave, stunned with a largely dichromatic palate, Ballad harnesses the spectrum of visual splendour: dusky hues of orange, green, piercing through shades of faded shadows. Such cacophony of excess is simply intoxicating: an overwhelm to the most complex of senses, etching each frame into a thrall of sheer ecstasy. Accompanying the electric escapade gleams bombastic techno-pop, a gloriously maximalist venture by continued collaborator Volker Bertelmann. Two consecutive Academy Award nominations—one, of course, a win—and the composer has returned with perhaps his strongest effort yet, a pulse-pounding jolt of auditory profusion that overtakes the senses, elevating sequences of cardistry from the realm of the mundane.

Alas, as stylistically compelling as the feature’s technicalities may be, there remains an incessant sensation that such excess may be in abundance to mask a separate deficit. The jaw-dropping quick hands, though glinting with promise, do not entirely distract from the deficiencies in structure, the dismissible payoff, floundering beneath such sheen. Colin Farrell does his best to bring anxiety-riddled gravitas to the (excellently-monikered) Lord Doyle, though even he struggles to propel with stakes so inconsequential.

Perhaps the deficit lies in motive, in character. Moniker aside, Doyle—a persona, a compelling one at that—acts, in part, like that aforementioned technical sheen: a curtain attempting to obscure a lack of depth beneath. Over the course of the first act, it becomes apparent that “Doyle” has committed some sin, escaping to anonymity in Macau, his self-inflicted penance. Not once, however, do his actions ever feel like an attempt to atone; instead, they seem a perpetual escape. Perhaps that is, in fact, telling of his character: the man would rather escape his truth than confront it, a suggestion of cowardice, heroic insufficiency. Still, save for the knell-entrusting entrance of teetering agent Cynthia Blythe (Tilda Swinton), not once does Doyle seem a man fighting for his freedom. Lifestyle, it seems, holds more purchase than life itself. Swinton, in a similar manner, is entirely under-utilized. More a conduit for incite than an individual with any semblance of agency, her disparate knell could easily be replaced by a telegram, a written note, a phone call, without failing to usurp a single narrative beat. One wonders what, exactly, the intention of casting such an A-lister, then, might have been; for though her very presence may invoke the sheer draw of celebrity—and open the opportunity for a playful, if narratively-extraneous, mid-credits moment—when viewed through the lens of the ultimate narrative, relegating the actress to little more than a lived message seems a curious inclusion.

Furthermore, though the first act of the film drips with indisputable style—that aforementioned neon sheen, a darkened glow drawing from the shadows—such atmospheric compulsion swiftly dissolves as Doyle is chased out of the skyscraping casinos, palette expanding to dockside psychedelia as Berger forsakes singularity for confound. This is, in part, a product of the narrative: without a failsafe motive, Doyle’s ensuing actions lack the compulsion, drive, to progress with any promise. Though Berger attempts to lean into a sense of dreamlike ambiguity—a juxtaposition, perhaps, against the distinctive glitter of Macau—such becomes a gamble: one that does not pay out for any of its players. Without providing any basis as to what, exactly, is occurring—without making clear what is real, what is a dream—there ensues an unreliability of character that, though perhaps compelling in a scripted medium, fails to translate effectively onto the screen, a flaw further compounded by the sheer fact that one, again, knows little about Doyle to even hint towards any sense of reliability. This, in turn, unmoors the sequence of events, loosening the narrative, sacrificing comprehension with every pull from the mundane. One almost wishes that the locale had remained static, indulgence wrought though perpetual casino-based intrigue; after all, such atmosphere—singular; enthralling—provided an unwavering backbone to the earliest events, and only once it is returned to, in the film’s final moments, does Ballad of a Small Player slowly, steadily, regain its stride.

Perhaps Berger is not entirely at fault. His stylistic tendencies, after all, do gleam through the murk of the culminate narrative. Ballad of a Small Player is, at the end of the day, an adaptation of an unusually-panned novel: a title that garnered passable, if muted intrigue upon its 2014 release, and maintains a rating of only 3.5 on Goodreads: comprised primarily of 3-star entries, significantly lower than the website’s oft-highly-skewed aggregate of 3.7-3.8. Might the film’s faults—those surrounding depth of character, mid-film waver of appeal—be in response to frailty of the source material, largely inviolable by Berger’s pen? Though this may not entirely excuse the disparagement wrought upon the viewing experience, it may provide an explanation as to how, somehow, the culmination fell so flat, despite such stellar execution—and a proven catalogue of past success.

It is somewhat surprising that such an effort will be relegated to the depths of streaming, as the most memorable qualities of Ballad of a Small Player are those that demand to be experienced within a darkened theatre, electrified in the throes of dazzling light, of thumping bass. Though occasionally shallow, hollow in echoic shades of motive, perhaps plot, the splendour of a Berger film remains on full display—and though his pen may waver, faltering as Doyle descends from the casinos, stepping out into the second act, brief flashes of exhilaration ensure that, though the effort may not linger in the cultural canon as did its predecessors, it still remains an electrifying viewing experience: one whose arresting visuals, pulse-pounding score, and excellent Farrell performance cement it as a memorable—if, ultimately, polarizing—effort by the auteur.