Ballad of a Small Player

Tropic Sprockets by Ian Brockway

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Edward Berger (“Conclave”) highlights the perils of addiction in “Ballad of a Small Player,” his new film based on a novel of the same name by Lawrence Osborne. The film has vibrant electric visuals and solid acting. Narratively the story runs along conventional lines with little progression, novelty, or surprise. All that is revealed here is the protagonist’s possession by addiction.

Lord Doyle (Colin Farrell) is a ne’er-do-well with a gambling addiction. Escaping a criminal conviction of embezzlement and thievery, he is in Macau during the festival of the Hungry Ghost. He lives at the gambling table and consumes unbelievable amounts of food and drink.

Cynthia Blithe (Tilda Swinton) is the detective trying to bring him to justice.

For most of an hour, one sees Doyle sweating, shaking, nauseated and retching seemingly on the edge of dysentery or a heart attack from the sheer volume of what he consumes. One quickly gets the picture that Lord Doyle is a hungry ghost, insatiable and ravenous. The very thought of food gives him goosebumps, and he starts to shake as if in a seizure. It is as if Doyle is transforming into a salivating lycanthrope, his gustatory lust in overdrive.

Farrell does well in this as his face becomes a geometric Rubik’s cube of suffering folding in and knotting up upon itself—a topography of pain. The film is near virtuosic in portraying Doyle as a red ball in a pinball machine, adrift in a maze of neon. At times Lord Doyle’s face turns carnivorous and scary: a real-life Francis Bacon Hellscape in a Funhouse mirror.

Near collapse, Doyle is rescued by Dao Ming (Fala Chen) a kind of sensual spirit guide and they spend time smoking opium.

These are the moments when the film shines— an Asian cousin to Terry Gilliam’s “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” (1998). Gigantic plates of food are brought, some of them still quivering, mollusk-like, meaty, and insectile. Innards and goop drip and congeal on Doyle ‘s chin, the sputum of gluttony. He is a poker player drawn by William Burroughs.

Though this film sounds only one note of addiction, the visualization is startling in its pyrotechnic representation of Macau, a dragon that swallows Lord Doyle whole without so much as a belch.

Write Ian at ianfree11@yahoo.com