"Rumours" is a Guy Maddin film. So you need to know going in that it will be an absurd, surrealistic, over-the-top festival of craziness.
Maddin's first film came out in 1985. Since then, he has completed twelve feature films and dozens of shorts that are iconic among cinephiles. His work includes a short film starring Isabella Rossellini as a legless matriarch who sponsors a competition to discover which country produces the saddest music in the world. For another film, Maddin stipulated that during its theatrical release an eleven-piece orchestra, a Canadian castrato vocalist and a narrator doing voiceovers must all participate live at each screening. In a related development, the film was never offered in wide release.
In "Rumours," Maddin co-directs with long-time colleagues Evan and Galen Johnson. Evan Johnson wrote the script. The story centers on a meeting of the G7 countries (Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan UK, US) to address an unspecified international emergency. The group soon begins to draft a position statement, in lieu of taking actual action. Even this tepid response is sabotaged by the personal agendas of the participants. The Canadian Prime Minister sleeps with the Chancellor of Germany, in part to compensate for the emotional indifference of the UK Prime Minister, a previous paramour. The French President feels the need to emote at every opportunity. The Italian President unctuously offers other G7 members a variety of sausages from the inner pockets of his coat. Eventually, these "leaders" find themselves mysteriously abandoned by the support staff. They stumble around on fog-shrouded terrain, encounter an all-seeing AI tasked with rooting out pedophiles and discover an unbodied brain the size of an SUV.
Several major actors have lent their star power to this endeavor. Of course Australian Cate Blanchett is the Chancellor of Germany. Charles Dance, a quintessential Brit (Tywin Lannister in "Game of Thrones," Lord Mountbatten in "The Crown"), portrays the US President without the inconvenience of eliminating his upper-class British accent. In a refreshing change of pace, the other G7 representatives are all veteran actors native to the countries they represent. Alicia Vikander has an incendiary cameo as an EU functionary/apocalyptic prophet whose predictions of doom are somewhat less effective because they are uttered in Swedish.
Professional critics apparently are contractually obligated to swoon because this is (kneel and genuflect here) Guy Maddin. Regular moviegoers are more likely to just pass out from boredom. While this film makes a fair point about the fecklessness of many of the leaders on the world stage, it's ultimately a one-note tune that becomes tiresome. "Rumours" elongates material would make an inspired, captivating short film. But here, it stretches its content and the moviegoers' patience past the breaking point.
