Interview by Paul Salfen
By Paul Salfen AMFM Magazine
The neon of Macau never sleeps, and neither, it seems, does Edward Bergen. Fresh off a blockbuster that left audiences gasping, the director could have coasted into safer waters. Instead, he dove head-first into Ballad of a Small Player, a taut, glittering fever-dream about a man who keeps doubling down on a losing hand. I caught Bergen in a rare quiet moment—though “quiet” is relative when your film is set inside the clanging, smoke-hazed casinos of the world’s gambling capital. Over Zoom, his eyes carried the same electric tension he describes on set: every frame a single roll of the dice.
“Filming is like painting with no eraser,” he told me, voice low, as if the walls might be listening. “A painter wakes up, hates yesterday’s stroke, and paints over it. We get one shot. One mood. One cloud drifting across the sky at the exact wrong second. You feel it in your stomach the whole day.”
That stomach—Colin Farrell’s, specifically—is the true north of Ballad of a Small Player. Farrell plays Lord Doyle, an English aristocrat hiding in Macau after some unspoken disgrace. He’s broke, boozy, and addicted to baccarat tables that promise salvation in red and black. Debts climb faster than the champagne bubbles in his glass. Enter Dao Ming (Fala Chen), a casino worker whose own shadows match his, and Cynthia Blithe (Tilda Swinton), a private investigator with a dossier and a vendetta. Reality frays. The cards keep coming.
Bergen’s obsession with Doyle’s gut began on the page—Lawrence Osborne’s novel—but crystallized in a single scene that still haunts him. “Colin gorges himself,” he said, leaning closer to the camera. “Foie gras, lobster, champagne, the works. He’s stuffing himself like the table stuffed him with hope minutes earlier. It’s gluttony as metaphor. He wants everything—money, escape, love, oblivion—and ends up with nothing but a bellyache and a mirror.”
The sequence plays like a bacchanal in hell: close-ups of dripping butter, Farrell’s eyes glassy with desperation, the camera circling like a vulture. “We shot it practical,” Bergen recalled. “Real food, real sweat. Colin ate until he couldn’t. Between takes he’d laugh, wipe his mouth, and say, ‘Again.’ The crew watched in silence. You could feel the whole film pivot on that moment.”
Pivot it does. Ballad is less a gambling movie than a love story disguised as one. “Love wins over greed,” Bergen said, almost surprised to hear himself admit it. “We’re bombarded—Instagram, billboards, endless choice. Doyle’s buffet is our feed. None of it fills the hole.” The film’s final act trades chips for something quieter: a hand reaching across a table not for cards, but for another human being.
Farrell, Bergen insists, is the reason any of it works. “He walks on set and the air changes. Not ego—inspiration. Grips straighten their backs. The focus puller breathes deeper. Colin gives so much, you have to give back.” I asked if there was ever a day the star faltered. Bergen laughed. “Only when the lobster ran out.”
For aspiring filmmakers watching from afar, Bergen’s advice is blunt: “Patience. Persistence. Keep shooting. It’ll work if you want it badly enough.” He says it like a man who’s bet his rent money and somehow walked away whole.
As our time ended, Bergen glanced off-screen—probably at dailies, maybe at tomorrow’s call sheet. “The biggest rush,” he said, “is handing the film to the world and waiting for the verdict. Did we get the scene? Did we make them feel Doyle’s stomach drop?”
In Ballad of a Small Player, the answer is a resounding yes. The cards are on the table. The house lights dim. And somewhere in the dark, a gambler’s heart skips a beat—ours, not just his.
