‘Rumours’: Cannes Review

Dir. Guy Maddin, Evan Johnson, Galen Johnson. Canada/Germany 2024. 109mins

Both in his long solo career, and in recent collaborations with brothers Evan and Galen Johnson, Canadian director Guy Maddin has created some of the most idiosyncratically wayward works in that nebulous canon called ‘cult’ cinema, including shape-shifting portmanteau The Forbidden Room and The Green Fog, a jigsaw ‘remake’ of Vertigo. Now he and the Johnsons have taken a startling left turn with a pulp horror set during a G7 summit that – notwithstanding splashes of Maddin’s characteristically cinephile sensibility – is a complete departure from his previous work. 

A prestige international cast throw themselves gamely into the midnight-movie lunacy

Rumours is a bizarre confection: a political satire and apocalyptic plea that suggests a cross between Dr Strangelove, Buñuel’s The Exterminating Angel and Night of the Living Dead. Another major departure – and certainly the film’s biggest selling point – is a prestige international cast headed by Cate Blanchett and Charles Dance, with an eccentric support role for Alicia Vikander, all throwing themselves gamely into the midnight-movie lunacy. 

Throwing us off course with opening credits that cheekily use the time-honoured Wes Anderson font, the film is set in Germany, at the castle of Dankerode, where representatives of the G7 nations are holding a summit. The host premier is German president Hilda Ortmann (a suavely beaming, sleeky turned-out Blanchett), while the other six nations are represented by Charles Dance (US), Denis Ménochet (France), Roy Dupuis (Canada), Nikki Amuka-Bird (UK), Rolando Ravello (Italy) and Takehiro Hira (Japan). Quite why the US is represented by a British actor whose accent and peppery manner are manifestly English throughout is one of the film’s running jokes – as is the depiction of Canadian premier Maxime Laplace (Dupuis) as a heartbroken but ever up-for-it hunk. 

Things start calmly enough, as the septet settles down in a lakeside gazebo to enjoy an official dinner and starts work on a Provisional Statement that will address an undefined but exceptionally urgent crisis. But badinage and amicable misunderstanding seem likely to delay work on this crucial document, together with evident sexual tensions: Maxime and British PM Cardosa Dewindt (Amuka-Bird) have had a previous liaison, while Hilda seems only too keen to help the brooding Canadian get over his current amorous woes. Dark ancient forces are also at work on the estate: archaeologists have dug up the well-preserved body of an Iron Age bog dweller and, when France’s Sylvain Broulez (Ménochet) falls into the excavation pit, things take an eerie turn – heralded by inserts in black and white, with a 40s/50s chiller feel.

Scripted by Evan Johnson from a story by the directors, the film is most successful in its opening stretch, playing off character eccentricities against the politicos’ deadpan coining of hollow diplomacy-speak. Once they head into the forest seach of help, the film coasts through a rather inert patch, with the characters schlepping doggedly into the weird night – where they encounter a giant brain, tended to by the Secretary General of the European Commission (Alicia Vikander). There’s a nice upturn towards the end, however, as the group debates whether an apparent distress call is quite what it seems. 

Coming across as a wry upmarket variation on pulp horror, not unlike Jim Jarmusch’s zombie comedy The Dead Don’t Die, Rumours doesn’t quite maximise the potential of its incongruous encounter between the living dead and the great and good, or between urbane boardroom satire and psychotropic freakiness. What sustains it, though, are the performances, performed with relish by an ensemble cheerfully riffing on national stereotypes. Standouts are Blanchett (who execs, together with art-horror favourite Ari Aster), who summons a sly mix of flirtatious gaucheness and bureaucratic decorum, and Dance, who gives his crusty best as a seen-it-all doyen prone to nodding off. Ménochet is also enjoyable as the affable, bumptious, talkative bon vivant.

Stefan Ciupek’s cinematography lays on goulash-thick atmospherics, and Kristian Eidnes Andersen’s score is supplemented by an oddball mix of borrowings from Sibelius, Rachmaninov, British library composer Alan Hawkshaw – and Enya.