Imagine a film where Cate Blanchett plays a version of Angela Merkel. And Charles Dance is a Joe Biden parody in full British accent. Now add Denis Ménochet as a boisterous French president carried around a damp forest in a wheelbarrow and Alicia Vikander as a beautiful diplomat who tells tales of the end of the world in frenzied Swedish. A feel more pinches of insanity and you would have “Rumours,” the newest by Canadian maverick trio Guy Maddin, Evan Johnson, and Galen Johnson.
It is the annual G7 conference, and the leaders from the world’s most advanced democracies are tasked with drafting a statement on an undisclosed global crisis. The details behind the crisis are of little matter. What matters is how the task at hand allows the filmmakers to delineate the dynamics between the authority figures without having to zigzag through stuffy flashbacks and overexposition. Who slept with whom in previous summits? What are the scandals unfolding back home? What scandals are about to unfold when they meet next?
READ MORE: Cannes Film Festival 2022: The 22 Films Everyone Will Be Buzzing About
This clever narrative device makes the first half hour of “Rumours” a total riot. Led by Blanchet’’s Chancellor Hilda, the host of this year’s annual summit, the group sits down for dinner at a beautiful, private gazebo. As they speak, punctuating every sentence with expressions of the likes of “private sector,” “global economy,” and “stock market” as if they can conjure a valuable insight just by saying it, the filmmaking trio handily delineates who occupies which political cliché.
Hilda dons Merkel’s trademark bob and colorful blazer, and Dance is the old American president who can’t help but fall asleep after the slightest of efforts. Ménochet is the overconfident French leader always looking for an opportunity to boast about the country’s glorious history, and Nikki Amuka-Bird is the contrived UK Prime Minister who grows increasingly frustrated at the group’s lack of productivity. Takehiro Hira is the odd man out as the quiet Japanese Prime Minister, Roy Dupuis the womanizing Canadian Prime Minister with a luscious beard and a greying man bun and the film’s most delightful punching bag comes in the shape of Rolando Ravello as the clueless Italian Prime Minister.
The gazebo dinner is sharply written, landing punchline after punchline as the seasoned group of actors gets to flex out their comic chops. The incompetent group of politicians tasked with solving the world’s greatest issues is an old trope, done brilliantly by Chaplin to “Saturday Night Live,” but it feels far from beaten when done by the Canadian trio. By the time the Italian Prime Minister answers the question of whether he has any great regrets in life by recalling the time he dressed up as Mussolini for a costume party and then doubling up on it, “Rumours” feels like one of the greatest satires to come out of a prestigious festival in a while.
But of course, all that feels a bit too good to be true usually is. Once the group realizes something eerie is afoot and begins wandering around the dark forest nearby, “Rumours” loses much of its steam. While the first act feels dynamic despite its stationary setting, the latter sections unravel oppositely. The gags that played so well the first time around grow tiresome through repetition, and the mystery around the big event that seems to lead them all into doom takes center stage to the detriment of the relationship between the characters.
The dreamlike forest is shot beautifully, the fog enveloping the strange, looming creatures that seem to be behind this odd Armageddon. Alas, the woods feel inescapable — and not only to the characters roaming around its trees. The sense of relief that comes when the group finally finds themselves in a different setting after what feels like a neverending stint at the bog is welcome, but far too late to salvage the broken pace of the film. A few brief sequences towards the manic climax make for an interesting reflection on current issues such as AI (including a late gag involving the always brilliant Zlatko Buric shot as it came straight out of Alex Garland’s “Civil War”), but nothing ever reaches the sharpness of the film’s first scenes.
Still, out of the many things one can call the strange little creature that is “Rumours,” dull is certainly not one of them. There’s much pleasure to be had in watching the large-framed Ménochet wrestle a slimy ghoul inside an open grave or Dance deliver a melancholic monologue on the unbearable grief of not having been assassinated a la Kennedy. Plus, where else could you get Cate Blanchett initiating sex by asking a fellow sovereign to discuss issues of the “private sector”? That alone is worth giving this one a shot. [C+]