Ballad of a Small Player

To know the value of something, you can’t just win it — you have to earn it. That’s a lesson that Edward Berger, cinema’s new premier middlebrow bombast merchant, should have learnt before taking on Ballad of a Small Player. But the success of his previous two, Oscar-winning movies, All Quiet on the Western Front and Conclave, was unearnt and undeserved, so here we have a brash, shallow, wholly unconvincing movie from a director swinging big on a losing hand. Messy and cartoonish yet striving for depth and profundity, this is a hopelessly heavy-handed movie that lands with an even heavier thud.

Lord Doyle (Colin Farrell) is a high-stakes gambler full of ambition, cockiness, and nerve, but empty of pocket. He’s living a life of luxury in Macau that he’s on the brink of squandering, as his losing streak catches up with him — hotel bills rocketing, casinos barring him, and a private investigator from England, Cynthia Blithe (Tilda Swinton), now on his trail. But any gambler knows that the brink of a life-changing loss could also be the brink of a life-changing win, and an encounter with a fellow lost soul, Dao Ming (Fala Chen), could turn the former into the latter for Doyle.

Ballad of a Small Player tells a stylized story, built from well-worn tropes, and Rowan Joffe’s screenplay doesn’t diminish this aspect. But Berger’s direction does. He tries to engineer a modern kind of sincerity that chafes against the classical nature of the story and script. Quips and maxims spoken in a naturalistic cadence become drained of all their import, left to sound pat and corny. Meaningful narrative developments become easy conveniences, building a fantasy without root in any recognizable reality. The movie wants to be all things at all times — bold yet familiar, daring yet cliché, stylized yet sincere — but there’s no identifiable attempt to find a method of merging these elements. It’s wild and wayward, and without any innovation this waywardness becomes merely coarse and irritating.

It’s all stylistic exaggeration with precious little depth or subtlety, every blusterous tic a stab at creating mood or tone, rarely actually revealing or reflecting something within the narrative or characters, all extraneous artifice, no authenticity. It becomes extremely difficult to generate any concern for Doyle and his predicament, as Berger tries to elicit genuine emotional responses from non-genuine stimuli — James Friend’s garish neon-drenched cinematography and Volker Bertelmann’s brutish orchestral score doing the most to the least effect. From very early on, Ballad of the Small Player has already become a movie of empty braggadocio and pointless grandiosity, full of banal, inexpressive compositions designed to appeal to the most undiscerning aesthetes. Berger is a filmmaker second, a wannabe bourgeois imagemaker first; he manufactures gravitas and meaning without truly developing them nor understanding how to integrate them into his style, and so every image feels hollow, every line of dialogue pompous.

The result is a posey, presumptive movie of ersatz parts that consistently fail to coalesce into a single persuasive statement, either artistically or narratively. Farrell is too earnest and casual for the role, while Swinton is too broad, dressed like a character from a children’s TV show. Doyle’s sporadic narration is employed to tell us things Berger doesn’t bother to show: he’s described as a man “cloaked in invisibility,” a quality never made apparent by the diegetic action. And the Westerner-adrift-in-an-exotic-locale story is, in 2025, horribly old-fashioned, with none of Berger’s loud, hysterical stylistic extravagances doing anything to update the formula. In effect, they are just strikes at winning value on a desperate chance, rather than earning it on intelligence and filmmaking acumen. — PADAÍ Ó MAOLCHALANN

The Souffleur

Elaborate, ephemeral, and exceedingly difficult to pull off, the souffle takes a serious amount of skill, experience, and precision to make, but typically takes just a few moments to eat. Its reputation as a symbol of culinary luxury is both due to the difficulty of its making and the simplicity in its eating, the knowledge that such care and effort went into producing such a trifle. Gastón Solnicki’s The Souffleur is a similar thing — like any movie, it’s the result of extensive care and effort in its making, but it’s brief, light, and perhaps a little insubstantial in its eating.

A luxury hotel may be a similar thing, too. In The Souffleur, Lucius Glantz (Willem Dafoe) is the manager of the Hotel Intercontinental Vienna, an establishment that’s basked long enough in its own glamour that it’s fast become faded, and is set for redevelopment after being bought by Argentinian realtor and would-be designer Facundo Ordoñez, played by Solnicki himself. The hotel is Glantz’s pride and joy — he mingles with guests, waters the basement ice rink, tends to minor technical problems, and only seems to set foot outside it to deal with hotel-related issues. The details of Glantz’s work, normal in this scenario, nevertheless appear absurd to the objective eye — hosing down an ice rink may seem like an unnecessary chore to most, but then luxury is never necessary. His narration describes the hotel in near-parodically lofty terms: we learn that it was the first hotel in the world to have telephones in every bathroom. A trifle, indeed.

Solnicki, like his character, has a fascination for architectural spaces, though he may belittle himself somewhat in the casting, since the character supposedly has little talent for actually understanding these spaces. In static shots, Solnicki both examines existing environments and creates new ones. He has a fabulous appreciation for how space, scale, and proximity define people’s states of mind, and for how the depiction of these on film can define the viewer’s own appreciation of the action. There is, thus, a direct connection developed between the on-screen physical space and the cerebral space. The hotel is a large, grand environment populated here and there by a random assortment of employees and guests; the brain is an environment itself, populated by even more random thoughts and impulses. Ordoñez’s decision to purchase the hotel, the result of a lifelong obsession after a visit in his childhood, is perplexing to Glantz and his associates; equally perplexing are some of Glantz’s utterances on Ordoñez, at one point narrating, “I wonder how it would feel to punch him in the face.”

The Souffleur is swift but gentle, a touch opaque, but sincere, and not without profundity. It’s concerned with identity and how it is formed, specifically in relation to one’s environmental circumstances. Glantz is an American with a German name living in Austria, his successor is an Argentinian, and the guests are from across the globe. Who is Glantz? How has the hotel informed his identity, or those of its many other employees, including his daughter, Lilly (Lilly Lindner)? And how have they informed the hotel’s identity? Solnicki apparently prefers to pose these questions coyly than to proffer answers to them, concerning himself with poetic asides, like a mournful piano duet that brings Glantz first to tears and then to maniacal laughter, and quirky gags, like a city council meeting that Glantz interrupts to read aloud a section from a book about alpacas. The alpaca on the book’s cover gurns, and the meeting’s attendees shrug.

If the opacity of what Solnicki’s getting at in The Souffleur is offset by the film’s lightness of tone, and vice versa, these two elements don’t quite gel — like the souffle sampled by Glantz in an early scene, it may have risen, but it doesn’t taste exactly right. Still, Solnicki works with confidence, and obvious skill, and that counts for something. And his propensity for leaving matters unresolved does have some lasting impact, as when one character gives Glantz a mysterious piece of life advice: “In the struggle between the world and yourself, hold the world’s coat.” Had the film as a whole left the same level of impact as some of its individual aspects, it might have been more than a trifle. Still, for as long as it lasts, it’s a pleasant enough little dish. — PADAÍ Ó MAOLCHALANN

Promised Sky

A moment of peculiar poignancy opens Erige Sehiri’s sensitive, if somewhat unremarkable, Promised Sky. A young girl is being bathed by three women as she relates a story — the true story of a sea journey she took. They ask her simple, innocent questions, and she provides simple, startling responses, almost nonchalantly describing a scene of violence and peril. The truth becomes rapidly apparent — the girl is a refugee, now separated from her family, and the women now her unofficial caretakers. Related are harrowing moments from the recent past, adding bitterness to a sweet moment in the present.

Difficulty abounds throughout this film, though Sehiri’s approach is never morose. Promised Sky is a surprisingly light, accessible, optimistic film, sourcing hope from despair, and never artificially so. The three women, pastor Marie (Aïssa Maïga), student Jolie (Laëtitia Ky), and undocumented Naney (Debora Lobe Naney), are Ivorians living in Tunisia, struggling to build better lives for themselves in a country growing increasingly hostile to Sub-Saharan migrants. Their struggles are born from necessity and, though the strain they feel shows few, if any, signs of abating, it’s the same necessity that drives all of us — the hope of better times ahead. Marie finds it in faith, Jolie in persisting with her studies, and Naney in the likely futile promise that she may strike it big (or big enough for now) with one of her small-time illegal schemes.

Sehiri finds hope in reality, in the understanding that even the most arduous lives are often spent, day to day, striving for positive change. She thus focuses on verisimilitude over dramatic urgency, a sacrifice that engenders a lack of momentum, but she orchestrates it well. With an excellent cast that universally avoids the temptation to yield to the potentially melodramatic narrative elements, she crafts believable moments, naturally fluid conversations with authentic delivery. It’s a fundamentally nuanced film, one that calibrates a fine, naturalistic balance between light and dark, comedy and tragedy, perceptive to the limitless implications in and interpretations of any detail that’s rooted in reality. A word here or a glance there may carry a very specific dramatic intent in a more calculated story; in Promised Sky, where these details are designed only to reflect real, complex stories, the intent is infinitely multifaceted. 

Yet there is dramatic construction here and, believable though this film may be from moment to moment, it’s too rudimentary to allow Sehiri’s smart, sympathetic work to shine as it should. The three protagonists are three very distinct types, and their identity as such feels like schematic representation. Their arcs too, while undoubtedly reflective of the experience of many women like them, follow familiar lines that give the film overall a sense of inevitability, even if it’s executed with sincerity and compassion. If it would do these stories a disservice to furnish them with some element of surprise, the film’s lack of an original approach formally, stylistically, and narratively renders it mundane, which may be an equal disservice. 

But the sensitivity and sympathy exhibited by Sehiri are admirable, and her method of doing so, in collaboration with fellow screenwriters Anna Ciennik and Malika Cécile Louati, is intelligent. She doesn’t condense incident and emotion, shoehorning it into staged set pieces, but rather develops it gradually and organically. And she’s wholly non-judgemental, even toward characters whose presence may appear only to be antagonistic. Features such as these elevate Promised Sky above the status of the average issue movie, and provide the actors with strong material with which to craft fully-rounded characters. This film may not appear outwardly ambitious, but it’s full of beautiful, perceptive work that makes for a rewarding watch nonetheless. — PADAÍ Ó MAOLCHALANN

My Father’s Shadow

It’s June 1993 in rural Nigeria. Remi and his younger brother Akin (real-life brothers Chibuike Marvelous Egbo and Godwin Egbo) are bickering, eating food and playing outside with paper figures drawn to look like WWF Superstars. Their mother is away in another village, so they are all alone. That is, until they re-enter the house to find their father Folarin (Ṣọpẹ́ Dìrísù) has suddenly reappeared. Often absent from his sons’ lives, it is as if he has popped up out of nowhere. This return will be brief, as he must collect months of unpaid wages from his job in the city of Lagos. But then, perhaps capriciously, he allows Remi and Akin to accompany him. 

Meanwhile, the results of the country’s presidential election are pending. After a decade of military leadership under Major General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida, there is newfound hope for democracy and a brighter future under man-of-the-people candidate, MKO Abiola. Simultaneously, though, there is unrest bubbling under the surface. One person says the country needs “discipline” and army rule; newspapers are reporting a massacre at Bonny Camp; and as Remi and Akin spend the day with their father, taking in the city via trips to beaches and old fairgrounds, this proves to be a pivotal day on both personal and political levels.

The first Nigerian film to be part of Cannes’ Official Selection, My Father’s Shadow marks the directorial debut of British-Nigerian director Akinola Davies Jr. It’s a semi-autobiographical project made even more profoundly familial in that Davies Jr. has co-written it with his brother Wale (the two have a long-standing creative partnership, working together on shorts including the BAFTA-nominated Lizard). More important than such contextual information, however, is that the final product is a stunning, vibrant, and intimate film that merges familial and national uncertainties into a story that is both wholly engaging and richly realized. The U.K. has been on a bit of a hot streak with outstanding British debuts in recent years, and My Father’s Shadow manages to easily enter that pantheon.

The film begins quietly with sounds of nature, a flickering montage that provides scattershot glimpses of both newsreel footage and family life, and shows off how elliptical Omar Guzmán Castro’s editing is going to be. But there are also shots of rotting fruit and an ominous droning sound in this opening. An eerie tension looms (over this sequence and the entire film), accentuated by how Lagos is presented as a place loaded with urban bustle, cacophonous noises, and glimpses of soldiers on the streets. Hints of turmoil are never far away, and the score by Duval Timothy and CJ Mirra — impassioned and soaring at times — brilliantly encapsulates the sounds of a country and its unsettled nature during this period. And the spirit of ‘90s Nigeria is further evoked by exceptional costume design from PC Williams and production design by Jennifer Boyd and Pablo Bruhn of the creative studio ANTI (who have also worked on Beyoncé’s Black Is King). 

Also working overtime in the film’s favor is Dìrísù, who gives a quietly enrapturing performance here as Folarin. Tough but tender, he is stern with his sons but never overblown in his anger — all of which is further softened by his sparks of charm. He’s also a fervent Abiola supporter, optimistic that “change is coming” for the country and for his sons’ futures. Yet in a wisdom-filled conversation he holds with Remi on the beach, we slowly become privy to Folarin’s feelings on his own past: on his father abandoning him when he was younger, on missing his boys growing up whilst he works in the city, and on the loss of his brother that haunts his dreams. Dìrísù allows rivers of emotion to slowly, subtly leak from Folarin’s mysterious and ever-changing nature. 

But as its title implies, My Father’s Shadow is a film focused on Folarin’s boys, as we events and discoveries are primarily communicated through their point of view. Through Davies Jr.’s eye for detail and DP Jermaine Edwards’ naturalistic close-ups, there are copious shots of Remi and Akin looking, usually staring, at people’s faces — and discerning some of their father’s secretive movements and dealings (or, in one case, a waitress who gives a strange look to their father). Additionally, there is a compelling, natural air to the performances from the Egbo brothers, and the moving dynamic they share. The pair effectively exhibit a youthful playfulness and exuberance, while also believably evoking the brothers’ gradual understanding of who their father really is and what the world around them truly looks like. If childhood is built from the blissful illusion that things — be they are politics or absent fathers — are quite simple, then My Father’s Shadow is about the realizations and complications that arise when coming of age disabuses any such notions — and specifically, about coming to terms with parents as flawed, wounded humans.

But regardless of perspective or angle of entry, Davies Jr.’s film is one about fatherhood, its paternal sacrifices and future memories, all articulated with a deep uncertainty that builds and builds until a conclusion enveloped first in chaotic violence (mimicked in Edwards’ camerawork, which pulls off a number of staggering shots throughout), and then in breathtaking emotion. “The memories that cause you pain when someone leaves are the same ones that will comfort you later,” Folarin says to his sons at one point. By its ending, My Father’s Shadow has revealed the precise ways that such sage advice will function. This day and its recollections will provide for Remi and Akin, as evidenced in the film’s coda, adding a moving punctuation mark to a remarkable film and a special debut. — DANIEL ALLEN

Enzo

There’s comfort on familiar terrain. The coming-of-age story has been a mainstay in storytelling across all media for as long as stories have been told; the queer coming-of-age story, less so. But where other narratives and styles may be transformed, sometimes provocatively so, by the addition of a queer angle, the coming-of-age narrative befits LGBTQIA+ topics much more comfortably. And, in 2025, the kid (in the right environment) coming to a realization about their sexuality, exploring it, learning how to live within their new perception of themselves, is scarcely any different from the kid experiencing the same things about any other newfound aspect of their identity.

And so Robin Campillo’s Enzo treads extremely familiar terrain, following a 16-year-old boy over a summer where he explores, seemingly for the first time, the queer aspect of his identity. Enzo (Eloy Pohu) is working on a construction site, a vocational choice that’s surprised his wealthy parents (Élodie Bouchez and Pierfrancesco Favino), despite their acceptance of his unsuitability for traditional education. Their son is sensitive, artistic, unused to manual labour; he’s arguably equally unsuitable for it, though he persists, despite the disapproval of his boss. What keeps him on the site? It may be the company — Enzo tentatively makes friends with a pair of older Ukrainian men, Miroslav (Vladislav Holyk) and Vlad (Maksym Slivinskyi), the latter of whom displays a sensitivity toward Enzo that ignites a more profound attraction in him than the merely platonic.

But that attraction is apparently only one-sided, leaving Enzo adrift, harbouring a passion he’s neither known before nor is able to express in full. Neither is Campillo, nor writer Laurent Cantet, whose work here is the last he completed before his death in 2024. Enzo’s general withdrawal, the distance he keeps from all around him until his hormones erupt in sudden, sporadic bouts of reckless behavior, is mirrored too closely in Campillo’s direction. Classy, placid, manicured medium shots capture scenes of tepid emotion, following banal narrative lines to conclusions so straightforwardly you can almost see from the outset. Pohu is reserved, even in expressing Enzo’s torment, so one never gets the sense of irrepressible fervour required from the character to overcome the conventionality of the plot. There’s precious little tension, intensity, or ingenuity, and so, despite the sincerity, the movie’s terrain feels far too calm, far too familiar.

Both Campillo and Cantet are capable of markedly better work than this, though it shows through in occasional details here. Bouchez and Favino give strong, astute, unshowy performances, succinctly and unpretentiously communicating a depth of feeling that’s otherwise in short supply. The final scene has a quiet profundity that’s a little surprising, not least in the wake of the mundanity that’s preceded it, and it’s emotionally incisive in a way that the rest of the movie has failed to emulate. Besides, the movie is never outright bad — it’s handsome, reliable, and genuine. It’s just also far too comfortable, not least for its inclusion in a genre of storytelling that’s been around for so long. — PADAÍ Ó MAOLCHALANN