Review: Rumours

Image courtesy of Bleecker Street Media.

Canadian director Guy Maddin is one of filmdom's most unique voices - an auteur whose films are offbeat tales that often look as if they were made in the 1920s or 1930s (including two of his finest, "The Saddest Music in the World" and "Careful") or strike a personal note ("My Winnipeg").

His latest picture, "Rumours," features some of the same visual stylings and quirky beats, but it feels like a far cry from many of his best-known films. For starters, the film is in color, is set in the present, and features some well-known actors (Cate Blanchett, Alicia Vikander, and Charles Dance).

The picture is mostly a one-joke pony about a group of world leaders - Blanchett is the German president, while Dance is the U.S. president, despite his having a British accent - who have gathered at a remote location for a G7 summit and are sitting around a gazebo where they are trying to put together a statement on some unnamed international crisis.

The joke is that while things begin to crumble around them - which mostly revolves around graves in which the bodies of semi-prehistoric natives have been discovered and, much later, these natives arise and roam the countryside similar to a George Romero film - the world leaders expend all of their energy on personal crises (several of them have had or currently are having affairs with each other) and their angst at crafting their statement, which, in light of everything, seems pretty inconsequential.

So, while this might all sound more straightforward than your typical Maddin film, there are touches that alert you that you're in his universe, namely, a massive, pulsating brain discovered in the woods and, at several points, instances of zombie native masturbation (no, seriously).

"Rumours" is occasionally amusingly quirky in the way you might expect from a Maddin film, but it's also a little bit of a slog. There's little in the way of changes of scenery and the satire here doesn't feel as sharp as one might expect from the often-hilarious Canadian filmmaker.

Some of the film's laughs are generated by the Italian leader's seemingly inexhaustible selection of cured meats that he carries on him and the fact that Dance's U.S. president is about as British as one can get. Some plot elements veer toward the absurd - as one would expect in a Maddin film - such as a character suffering what seems to be a serious injury after he merely fell and rolled around a little in the mud.

But these minor amusements aside, "Rumours" is a curiously low key and not always effective Maddin creation. It's exciting to see him working with such a great cast and there's some of the usual humor you'd expect, but the film is ultimately a minor entry in his body of work.