JP Nunez
When it comes to politics, I’m like the Ents in The Lord of the Rings, at least before they meet Merry and Pippin. To quote Treebeard, their leader, “I am on nobody’s side because nobody is on my side.” I have zero faith in politicians or political parties, so when I first heard about Rumours, I was instantly intrigued. This movie promised to be a hard-hitting lampoon of everything wrong with our big-shot leaders, and I couldn’t wait to see it.
Rumours is directed by the trio of Guy Maddin, Evan Johnson, and Galen Johnson, and it stars Cate Blanchett, Roy Dupuis, Nikki Amuka-Bird, Charles Dance, Takehiro Hira, Denis Ménochet, Rolando Ravello, Zlatko Buric, and Alicia Vikander. The film is a satirical black comedy set during the G7 Summit, an annual meeting between the leaders of the world’s seven wealthiest liberal democracies–Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
This year, the summit members are trying to draft a provisional statement about a pressing global crisis, but soon after they convene, they experience a crisis of their own. They’re working outside, and in the course of their deliberations, they realize that everybody else on the event grounds has mysteriously vanished. They’re left to find their way back indoors all on their own, but that task isn’t nearly as easy as it sounds. Something not quite natural appears to be afoot, so to make it back to safety, these seven world leaders have to overcome a series of increasingly bizarre and surreal obstacles.
From that plot synopsis, it’s not hard to figure out what kinds of shots Rumours takes at the world’s most powerful political leaders. It’s all about their breathtaking incompetence, and even before these characters realize anything is wrong, that sensational ineptitude is on full display. Their discussions are marred by some of the worst trademarks of modern politics, from arrogant apathy to meaningless obfuscation and distraction, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
As the group tries to make it back indoors, their inadequacies magnify exponentially, and it all leads to a ludicrous finale that basically sums up why so many people think so little of politicians. On the more playful side, this movie also pokes fun at a couple of prominent national stereotypes, and from my experience, at least some of them are pretty spot-on. To take a couple of examples, the American president is hard-headedly practical and overly confident in his ability to lead the group, and at one point in the story, the Italian prime minister starts handing out random cold cuts to his fellow leaders.
On paper, that might sound like a nearly genius way to satirize our greedy and ineffective political overlords, but unfortunately, the execution in Rumours simply isn’t up to par. In particular, it commits the comedy genre’s cardinal sin: it’s not funny. Sure, there were a few halfway-decent gags that made me inwardly chuckle a tiny bit, but make no mistake, I was completely straight-faced the entire time.
I don’t know about you, but for my money, there are few cinematic faux pas worse than unfunny comedy. It often makes the experience cringey and uncomfortable in all the wrong ways, so it can ruin a film faster and more thoroughly than almost any other flaw. If you don’t laugh at the jokes, there’s usually not much else to latch onto, and that’s exactly what happens here. Despite good performances all around, the characters aren’t likable, and the story isn’t terribly compelling, so for about 95% of this movie’s runtime, I was simply waiting for it to end.
And I haven’t even gotten to the weirder parts of the film. Rumours never reaches David Lynch-level outlandishness, but it gets pretty bizarre. For instance, there’s a stretch where one of the characters can’t seem to speak anything but Swedish, and the change doesn’t seem to have any rational cause. Now, I often enjoy surrealist storytelling, but here, it doesn’t work at all. Most of these moments are played for laughs, and like the rest of the gags in this movie, they fall totally flat. They end up feeling like little more than weirdness for weirdness’s sake, so they don’t add anything to the film.
It’s very similar to Ari Aster’s nightmare comedy Beau Is Afraid, and I don’t think that’s a coincidence. Aster is an executive producer on this movie, and even though executive producers don’t always have a ton of creative input, I have a nagging suspicion that he did more than just raise funds for the project. This very much feels like his brand of surrealism, so if you enjoyed Beau Is Afraid, I think you’ll probably have a good time with this one too. But if you find that film insufferable, you’re almost certainly not going to like Rumours either.
To be fair, I actually enjoyed the first third of Beau Is Afraid, but on the whole, I fall into that second camp. I walked out of Ari Aster’s nightmare comedy greatly disappointed, and I felt the same way about this one. On paper, Rumours sounded like something I’d enjoy, so I was really looking forward to it. But like I said, the execution simply isn’t up to par. It’s one of the least funny comedies I’ve seen in a while, and the surrealist elements fall completely flat. I genuinely struggled to get through this movie, so unless you’re just dying to see it, I highly suggest that you give it a pass.
Rumours is set to hit theaters on October 18.
