Rumours review – laugh­ing while cry­ing inside

As the world burns, you’d be daft not to be dis­il­lu­sioned with polit­i­cal lead­ers who often pay mere lip ser­vice to solv­ing the issues plagu­ing soci­ety. This is espe­cial­ly true for the ones who make up the G7: an annu­al polit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic forum of the world’s wealth­i­est lib­er­al democ­ra­cies (plus rep­re­sen­ta­tives from the Euro­pean Union), where they dis­cuss mat­ters such as inter­na­tion­al secu­ri­ty and cli­mate change.

For a cer­tain gen­er­a­tion, it can seem like the G7’s only dis­cernible impact was inspir­ing Bob Geld­of to redo Live Aid again in 2005 with Live 8 (back when Rus­sia was still in the G8), a series of ben­e­fit con­certs in sup­port of pres­sur­ing the G8 to increase aid to elim­i­nate pover­ty. While a pledge was made to up finan­cial aid, the dis­par­i­ty between the rhetoric and the demon­stra­ble efforts to reduce glob­al pover­ty after­wards made it seem a pub­lic rela­tions stunt at best. The G8’s words had less lin­ger­ing impact than haunt­ing mem­o­ries of Pete Doher­ty and Elton John butcher­ing T.Rex’s ​“Chil­dren of the Revolution”.

All that brings us to the absur­dist com­e­dy-hor­ror Rumours, osten­si­bly the most main­stream film that Cana­di­an exper­i­men­tal­ist Guy Maddin (My Win­nipeg) has ever made, here co-direct­ing with Evan and Galen John­son. Their film presents a deli­cious premise for any­one right­ly dis­sat­is­fied with the world’s most ​‘pow­er­ful’ polit­i­cal fig­ures: what if all the inef­fec­tu­al mem­bers of the G7 got lost in the woods and had an awful time? And that’s before they come into con­tact with zom­bie-like crea­tures that vio­lent­ly masturbate.

We have the pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States (Charles Dance). We have the chan­cel­lor of Ger­many (Cate Blanchett). We have the British prime min­is­ter, bril­liant­ly played by Nik­ki Amu­ka-Bird. We have the pres­i­dent of France (Denis Méno­chet). We have the Cana­di­an (Roy Dupuis), Ital­ian (Rolan­do Rav­el­lo) and Japan­ese prime min­is­ters (Take­hi­ro Hira). We have all these char­ac­ters. And part­way through, they stum­ble upon Ali­cia Vikan­der as the sec­re­tary-gen­er­al of the Euro­pean Com­mis­sion, who ram­bles prophe­cies in Swedish beside a giant brain right out of Futurama.

Before encoun­ter­ing an apoc­a­lyp­tic event as they attempt to escape their wood­land retreat, the lead­ers are tasked with draft­ing a pro­vi­sion­al state­ment to address a recent cri­sis affect­ing the world. The specifics of what exact­ly they’re meant to bland­ly reas­sure the glob­al pop­u­lace about are con­cealed so as to plau­si­bly rep­re­sent any­thing, though one of the fun­nier ele­ments of this polit­i­cal pas­tiche is how Maddin and the John­sons repeat­ed­ly pull the rug out from under them­selves – when­ev­er a coher­ent satir­i­cal ​‘mes­sage’ seems to emerge from their sur­re­al­ist vignettes, it’s quick­ly derailed for a goofy gag.

There’s a sense to which Rumours is a one-joke movie, that joke being turn­ing the sup­posed adults in the room into dis­tract­ed, clue­less kids. But if some view­ers can still cling onto The West Wing as a com­fort watch even now, there’s some­thing to be said for the appeal of a text offer­ing the total flip side in its por­tray­al of centrism’s capa­bil­i­ties, espe­cial­ly one as full of punk­ish spir­it as this.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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