Colin Farrell plunges into an intoxicating fever dream among the high-stakes baccarat tables of Macau casinos with 'Ballad of a Small Player,' a rare major Western film shot on location in Asia's gambling capital.
The surreal, dark and twisty drama co-stars Tilda Swinton as an investigator in pursuit of Farrell's velvet-suited conman and gambling addict. It was filmed over 33 days in various Macau casinos, including scenes shot on live gaming floors while surrounded by real-life high rollers.
Farrell told AFP he had spent a crazy eight weeks living in hotels "in the middle of the gambling strip... which I can't imagine I would ever do" otherwise. "It was all-hands-on-deck. It was a bananas shoot," he said at the Netflix film's Toronto film festival premiere Tuesday.
Macau is the world's top casino hub by gross gaming revenue, roughly four times that of Las Vegas. The tiny Chinese-controlled territory has a skyline dominated by sprawling, luxurious casinos, many themed with replicas of global landmarks like the Eiffel Tower and canals of Venice.
While gambling is banned in China, it has been legal in the former Portuguese colony since 1844. "It's never been really shown like that on screen in a Western film. So, it felt like an adventure to me," director Edward Berger told AFP.
Macau has appeared more fleetingly in Hollywood films like 2016 heist flick "Now You See Me 2." Berger's new movie is the journey of "a fragile soul in a loud exuberant place... Macau is over-the-top so we wanted to capture that," he explained. "It's the most vibrant, most exuberant, colourful place I've seen."
Hungry Ghost
The movie takes place during the Hungry Ghost Festivala traditional celebration rooted in Chinese folk religion where the spirits of the deceased are free to roamwhich lends the film a supernatural air.
Several key scenes are also shot in nearby Hong Kong. The film borrows the colourful and kinetic trappings of Hong Kong cinema, including the films of Wong Kar-wai, Johnnie To and Hou Hsiao-Hsien.
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