In the loopy Canadian comedy ‘Rumours,’ the laughs hit close to home

It shows you what kind of year it’s been, and says something about the times we live in, that Guy Maddin’s surreal romp “Rumours” is starting to look more like reality than political satire.
A pastiche of genres that lands somewhere between the horror of “Night of the Living Dead” and the bawdy frivolity of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” it’s the funniest flick yet from Canada’s absurdist auteur Maddin, who gets a huge assist from co-directors Evan and Galen Johnson.
“Rumours” premiered at Cannes last May as an antic fantasy of G7 leaders — including an embattled Canadian prime minister and an assassination-obsessed U.S. president — who become literally lost in the woods during a global crisis.
Since then we’ve seen our PM, Justin Trudeau, fighting for his political life after reversals of electoral fortune, and former U.S. President Donald Trump targeted by two would-be assassins. We’ve also seen current President Joe Biden attract global ridicule after awkwardly greeting Italian PM Giorgia Meloni with a hug, kiss and salute at a real G7 summit.
The essential insanity of G7 gatherings — the leaders represent just 10 per cent of the world’s population and a shrinking share of the global economy — isn’t lost on whimsical Winnipegger Maddin or his co-conspirators the brothers Johnson. The three previously collaborated on the riotous Hitchcock riff “The Green Fog.”
They make their comparisons easy and their stereotypes broad. Roy Dupuis is the Trudeau surrogate, sensitive Canadian PM Maxime Laplace, who sports a hilarious man bun, quotes Neil Young and carries a grudge about a sexual liaison turned sour. Charles Dance’s U.S. President Edison Wolcott combines Trump’s sarcastic arrogance with Biden’s sweet daffiness.
Cate Blanchett’s cheerfully officious German Chancellor Hilda Orlmann recalls former German leader Angela Merkel, replete with blond bob and loud pink blazer. She’s also sweet on Laplace, as she soon demonstrates.
Similar spot-the-leader games can be played with the film’s other four G7 bosses: brisk British PM Cardosa Dewindt (Nikki Amuka-Bird), bloviating French President Sylvain Broulez (Denis Ménochet), eager Italian PM Antonio Lamorle (Rolando Ravello) and helpful Japanese PM Tatsuro Iwasaki (Takehiro Hira).
The seven world leaders are gathered at a forest-surrounded German mansion to discuss collective action regarding an unspecified global crisis (climate woes are hinted at).
They may not be able to agree on anything, but they’re doggedly determined to draft the traditional “provisional statement” of bland intention to do the right thing about something, whatever that may be. They also hope to agree on building western Europe’s largest sundial.
They continue writing their statement — making sure to put in boilerplate references to “geopolitical,” “bilateral” and “supply chain” — even after they discover their support staff has vanished, their smartphones are silent and they’ve been left alone together in the dark woods with a rapidly diminishing supply of fine wines.
Something serious has happened. Whatever it is has also reanimated the 2,000-year-old corpses of the bog people buried in the forest, one of which Orlmann happily introduced to her confreres at the start of their gathering. The bog dwellers are now marauding zombies with a penchant for energetic onanism, which may be their comment on politicians in general.
Just when you think this movie couldn’t get any loopier, a stroll deeper into the woods reveals a car-sized human brain, in the company of one Celestine Sproul, secretary-general of the European Commission.
Played by an almost unrecognizable Alicia Vikander, and bathed in misty light captured by cinematographer Stefan Ciupek, she babbles out some form of prophecy that warns “a black storm is coming” but also mentions “a new dawn.”
The G7 leaders are slightly less apocalyptic about it, as if they encounter such things all the time: “The giant brain is a game-changer,” one of them says.
None of this would seem at all strange to fans of Maddin’s decades-long canon of melodramatic movie ripostes and hat-tips, where embracing the absurd is a big part of his appeal.
Strangely enough, “Rumours” has a continuous narrative — there’s a definite beginning, middle and end — which could be the weirdest thing about it. There’s even an Enya tune on the soundtrack; you don’t get more mainstream than that.
“Rumours” also has one of the funniest come-hither lines of recent times. As Chancellor Ortmann prepares to make her move on PM Laplace, she asks him, “Should we say a little something about the private sector?”
She still has that pesky provisional statement on her mind, as well as something else. Sex is fleeting, global crises come and go, but bureaucracy is forever.