Celebrated Canadian surrealist Guy Maddin and his equally surreal collaborators Galen and Evan Johnson are back on their oddball bullsh-t with Rumours, a political satire cum apocalypse film, with an emphasis on cum because there is a lot of it in this film. The three filmmakers collaborate as co-directors and co-writers, with Evan and Galen Johnson doing triple duty as co-editors alongside John Gurdebeke. There are a lot of people contributing to Rumours, a film so grandiosely bizarre it feels like a singular vision, though it is more accurately described as a hive mind fever dream.
Set during a G7 summit of world leaders, Rumours is the kind of film you either agree to get along with or spend your time doing something else. Cate Blanchett stars as German chancellor Hilda Ortmann, wearing a power suit, haircut, and accent reminiscent of Angela Merkel. She is joined by Charles Dance as the inexplicably British American president, Edison; Denis Ménochet as Sylvain, the nerdy French president; Nikki Amuka-Bird as the repressed English prime minister Cardosa; Takehiro Hira as the adrift Japanese PM; and Rolando Ravello as the officious Italian PM. Roy Dupuis stars as Maxime, the man-bunned himbo PM of Canada.
Rumours establishes these seven world leaders in a cliquey friendship weighed down by past interactions, some of which are of a distinctly romantic nature. Everyone wants to bang the strapping Canadian PM, for instance, with Hilda constantly trying to get him alone. The goal of their meeting is to draft a provisional statement about some world crisis, never specified and never particularly important. What matters is that when pressed to do anything, when tasked with accomplishing nothing more than jotting down some basic ideas, these people cannot do it. They are literally incapable of even the most meaningless action. No one ever accused Maddin and the Johnsons of subtlety, and they aren’t subtle here, either.
During a lunch break, Hilda shows off some bog bodies found on the grounds of the castle hosting the summit. Their bones are long gone, leaving behind rubbery skin sacks with mutilated penises which might once have been prehistoric political leaders. Again, not subtle. And there’s no other way to describe the bog bodies except “chewy”, the props department really went off. Following this viewing of the dead, the world leaders retreat to a pavilion that looks like a prop from Bridgerton-themed p*rn to eat lunch, and they each have napkins printed like their country’s flag. I really want to know if the real G7 eats lunch with flag napkins.
Shot with a kind of filmy lighting scheme and set to overwrought swelling music (from composer Kristian Eidnes Andersen), with many zooms and particular focus on stares, Rumours has the dimensions of a soap opera. Everything feels histrionic and the world leaders are constantly distracted by petty personal concerns. A great source of interpersonal drama is Maxime, mired in an obscure political scandal and caught between the competing interests of Cardosa and Hilda. These people are supposed to be coming up with a concept of a plan for whatever the latest crisis is, but they keep trying to sneak off to have sex with Maxime.
Rumours starts out weird and keeps going from there, steadily elevating tension and oddities until the whole thing becomes absurdist comedy. In the film’s most brilliant moment, Maxime tries to convince a chatbot designed to weed out p*dophiles that he is one in order to alert authorities that the stranded world leaders need help. There are also m*sturbating bog zombies, a giant brain in the woods, and Alicia Vikander on a literal mind trip, but honestly, nothing in Rumours matches the chatbot moment. It’s such a perfect encapsulation of both political inertia and the average frustrations of dealing with technology in the 2020s.
The film is otherwise lightweight absurdism, but that one scene is so sharp and funny, it begs the question why the rest of the film couldn’t rise up to that level, too. Still, Rumours is the kind of hyper specific film that plays very well to those willing to play along, but is schlocky nonsense to those who can’t or won’t buy in. There’s no way to tell which you are unless you have experienced one of Maddin and the Johnsons previous films, like The Forbidden Room, or you’re willing to try a film about bog zombies rising against ineffective world government. If you’re open to that bonkers premise, Rumours is a very funny film.
Rumours is now playing in select theaters.
Attached: Cate Blanchett at the first ÖGNI Sustainability Symposium in Vienna on October 17, 2024.
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