During a humid morning in Macau, a blue-and-orange phoenix decorated with more than 60,000 flowers hatches from a giant pink Fabergé egg. This haughty bird revels in the gaze of spectators as it turns on a jewel-studded perch to the triumphant sound of clarions, then returning to its shell. Witnessing this spectacle, you could believe yourself to have stumbled across it at just the right moment. Stay longer, though, and you will discover that hatching occurs each 15 minutes without fail.
We are in summer 2024, and Farrell and Swinton are staying at this location while shooting Ballad of a Small Player, helmed by Edward Berger and based on the author’s atmospheric 2014 novel about spirits, remorse, and gambling. The actor portrays Brendan Reilly, an from Ireland thief who uses an English voice, uses the alias his title, and takes refuge at the luxury hotel, where he maintains a precarious lifestyle of drained opulence. After fled to Macau with a stolen fortune, he passes his evenings betting at baccarat, a high-stakes game of luck as simple as a coin toss. His co-star is the awkward investigator, who is labouring under multiple identities (at times she’s one name, then Cynthia), who has been hired to find Reilly and retrieve the loot.
This location feels like a real mind-bender. Kind of like residing inside that giant ornamental egg.
But that “headfuck” remark could also apply to Macau as a whole. Following 400 years as a Portuguese colony, this harbor town to the south of the mainland transitioned into a unique territory of China in 1999. Similar to Las Vegas, its casino hub exudes an intoxicating air of kitsch. The Cotai Strip is lined with towering copies of the Venetian bridge, the Eiffel Tower and Big Ben. Parked near the imitation Houses of Parliament is a Routemaster bus in which David Beckham – or rather, his virtual self – is yoo-hooing from the top level in his role as ambassador of the Londoner hotel. “Have you been in there?” the actress asks excitedly. “There are beefeaters doing jazz hands!”
Beyond the Glitz and Glamour: Serious Elements in a Surreal Environment
Regardless of what this might imply, Macau, which has been little-seen in Hollywood cinema, is a weightier subject than Las Vegas. Flashy live shows never really caught on here, and its gamblers are too focused to get drunk. Servers carry platters of tea or dairy, instead of mixed drinks, across the gaming areas. Ghosts of a different kind, though, are an integral aspect of the culture, as Ballad of a Small Player demonstrates. In a particular scene, Reilly is denied entry after the staff checks security video of his latest victory and spots a ghost loitering nearby.
Osborne’s book compares one casino to a “the storyteller enchanted castle imagined by a small child with a high fever”. This is reflected in the film’s location: the Rio, an abandoned ex- resort adjacent to a shop offering “coffee, greenery and home goods”. It has been designed by the production designer the artist to enhance its faded grandeur grandeur: gaudy chandeliers, reflective pillars with floral decals, archways framed by tasselled, red curtains and indoor greenery.
Characters Living in a World of Deception
For his first day on set, the writer Osborne is wearing a hat on the rear of his head, and moving about on supports after a motorcycle accident in the city, where he has resided since 2012. The author stations him in a canvas chair and looks admiringly at the abandoned casino, its card tables surrounded by extras whom Berger is busy stirring into a uproar before the next take. You hear a continuous sound as the haze generator envelops the room with its hazy vapor.
This artificiality seems appropriate for a movie where most of the characters are posing as someone else. “Guys I used to meet in Macau would call themselves nobles and aristocrats,” notes Osborne. “No one doubted them. Such as Lord Stow, who marketed his egg tarts here. Did he actually hold a lord?” In fact, he wasn’t: The city’s famous baker, who passed away in 2006, was a Boots pharmacist from Ilford in the county.
Acting Perspectives and Creative Influences
We watch a few takes of the lead riding the escalator down to the casino, then moving in and out the game areas as the supporting cast cheer around him. Farrell is attired in high-waisted cream trousers, a patterned top and braces, and a spiffy tomato-coloured jacket. The alternating colorful illumination has a clashing, contradictory impact, as if warning him to stop while urging him to proceed. The colors also add a hint of futurism into the ornate environment: a nod that Wong Kar-wai filmed parts of In the Mood for Love and its forward-looking semi-sequel 2046 here.
His sleek hair and pencil moustache that gives Farrell a note of raffish, retro charm was modeled by a lineage of classic actors: Clark Gable, Errol Flynn, the charmer. Did these shaped his portrayal? “Not directly,” the actor tells me. “But I’m aware that all I’ve seen or read or listened to inevitably ends up in my acting. Fans have asked me about The Penguin and whether I was influenced by Jimmy Gandolfini in The Sopranos. I still have not watched The Sopranos! Yet I know that each gangster I’ve ever seen has made its cataloged way into what I created in that project. The same with Reilly, be it individuals with addictions or people living existences of total artifice.”
Farrell’s own past struggles are well documented, though betting was not one of them. Some of his understandings into Reilly’s psychology have come from chatting to hotel executives here. “One told me the casino was ahead $24m the previous evening from two gentlemen. I said: ‘I assume they were quite downcast.’ He said: ‘Yes. But if they win, they feel just as bad.’”
