Film Review - Rumours
Images courtesy of Universal Pictures.
In our modern world rife with political satire both clever and cringeworthy, it’s rare to find media that manages to be both funny and substantive. Rumours is not one of those pieces of media, but I'm also not so sure that it's trying to be. Directed by the Canadian trio Guy Maddin, Evan Johnson, and Galen Johnson, the film is a riotous takedown of global leadership and political infighting in the form of a semi-surrealist shitpost.
The film stars Cate Blanchett as Hilda Orlmann, a German chancellor set to host a G7 summit at her secluded country estate, where the leaders of the world's most powerful democracies gather to discuss "the global crisis" - a term here used so vaguely it could mean anything from climate change to a concerning TikTok trend. The setting is perfect for a comedy of errors, and Rumours thankfully delivers more than its fair share of hearty chuckles. Joining Blanchett are Charles Dance, the inexplicably British president of the United States, and Roy Dupuis as a particularly beleaguered Canadian prime minister, but every member of the G7 has at least one memorable moment of complete and utter political ineptitude, including a brief appearance from Alica Vikander who speaks only her native Swedish tongue (and mostly unsubtitled, mind you).
The film's plot is chaotic on paper, but less so in execution. The leaders may be tasked with drafting a statement on "the global crisis," but their discussions quickly devolve into farce, much of which centres on the Canadian prime minister’s feelings of inadequacy. They debate everything from global warming to the frequency of the Olympic Games, all while indulging in a lavish dinner filled with petty squabbles. The absurdity reaches new heights when it seems an apocalypse is upon them, seemingly in part brought on by the unearthing of a race of bog people, who proceed to masturbate and then explode.
It's just a shame that these moments of insanity are sparse, and much of the film feels like it's chasing its tail, constantly reverting back to the drafting of the speech, in a manner that feels less like a satisfying comedic payoff and more like the film getting caught up in its own half-baked riffs, only to remember its premise. There's a great use of artifice throughout though, with an off-kilter campy vibe doing much of the heavy lifting while oh so many of the comedic beats seem far funnier in concept than execution, like one scene that has the Canadian prime minister chatting up an AI program that's designed to catch pedophiles - all in an attempt to get some kind of police aid.
Rumours is worth commending for its sheer gaul, but ultimately, it's biting off far more than it can chew. It's a bizarre comedy that's hard to recommend even for fans of bizarre comedies, but I can honestly say it all made a bit more sense when Ari Aster’s name came up under the producer credits. Between its mammoth-sized ambition and its delightfully colourful performances, it's the kind of movie that rarely gets made, and I'm beginning to think that might be a good thing.
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Rumours is screening in cinemas from Thursday the 5th of December.