<\/p>\n
It seems like only a year since Edward Berger was in the awards conversation with Conclave<\/em> \u2014 which is perhaps because it is. But even by the director\u2019s usual swift standards, Ballad of a Small Player<\/em> is a hell of a quick turnaround. Based on the novel by Lawrence Osborne, it stars Colin Farrell as Lord Doyle, a conman hiding out in the garish casinos of Macau, where he dreams of winning a fortune and making a fresh start.<\/p>\n Appearing at Contenders London alongside Farrell, the actor\u2019s co-star Fala Chen and cinematographer James Friend, Berger traced the movie back to its inception. \u201cIt started about eight years ago,\u201d he recalled, \u201cwith Mike Goodridge, our producer, who gave me the book. I read it and I thought it was fantastic. It was a great basis for a movie. I loved this place, Macau. I thought it would be interesting to shoot there and to bring images to our screens that we don\u2019t see so often. And this character fascinated me, this person in an environment that has so much to offer but who\u2019s so fragile inside. And when you think of fragile, I felt like the best person to express that with his eyes is Colin Farrell.\u201d<\/p>\n More from Deadline<\/strong><\/p>\n After a meeting in LA, Farrell read and loved the script. \u201cI had seen Edward\u2019s work with Benedict Cumberbatch and James \u2014 Patrick Melrose<\/em> \u2014 about eight, 10 years ago,\u201d he said. \u201cI loved that. There\u2019s a lot of cross-referential themes explored in Patrick Melrose<\/em> as there are in this film, I mean, he\u2019s a person who\u2019s making [an escape] because of unanswered emotional or psychological issues. And they\u2019re making it be aligned towards their own demise without fully being aware of the kind of heft of disintegration that they\u2019re experiencing, until it\u2019s almost too late. And then you find out that it\u2019s never too late \u2014 it\u2019s never too late to course-correct. But it was a really physical role, I think for everyone, including the crew. It was an incredibly intense shoot, in a really good way, that fed into the work because the story starts very loud, it starts in that bombastic way.\u201d<\/p>\n Indeed, the film opens with a lush sensory overload, as if Wong Kar-wei were to remake Martin Scorsese\u2019s Casino<\/em>. \u201cYou get a sense of opera from the opening frame, really,\u201d said Farrell, \u201cwhich Macau, generously enough, just visually lends itself to. It\u2019s a short film, an hour and 41 minutes, but it\u2019s a very quick descent into madness. And then an ascent out of that towards a kind of redemption\u2026 But, yeah, I was a bit raw by the end of it.\u201d<\/p>\n Best of Deadline<\/strong><\/p>\n Sign up for Deadline’s Newsletter<\/a>. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook<\/a>, Twitter<\/a>, and Instagram<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.yahoo.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It seems like only a year since Edward Berger was in the awards conversation with Conclave \u2014 which is perhaps because it is. But even by the director\u2019s usual swift standards, Ballad of a Small Player is a hell of a quick turnaround. Based on the novel by Lawrence Osborne, it stars Colin Farrell as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2083985,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[378487,316669,312990,391993,392104,392105,392103],"class_list":["post-2083984","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-ballad-of-a-small-player","tag-colin-farrell","tag-edward-berger","tag-james-friend","tag-lawrence-osborne","tag-mike-goodridge","tag-patrick-melrose"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Its-A-Very-Quick-Descent-Into-Madness-\u2013-Contenders-London.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2083984","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2083984"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2083984\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2083986,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2083984\/revisions\/2083986"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2083985"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2083984"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2083984"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2083984"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}