.

So, not the classic album from Fleetwood Mac but rather the black comedy/satire film starring Cate Blanchett.

Elevation Pictures

Written and Directed by the team if Guy Maddin, Evan Johnson, and Galen Johnson, Rumours is set during a working dinner for the G7 leaders, the chief executives, Presidents and Prime Ministers, of the leading democratic economies, as they attempt to draft a provisional statement concerning some crisis left by the script undefined. Dur the course of the dinner, which takes place in a gazebo, the supporting staff vanish, and the world leaders are left to their own inept devices while confront by undead bog bodies and mysterious giant forest brains.

With haunting cinematography from Stefan Ciupek and a striking color pallet the film has an impressive look to it and is further enhanced by a cast is excellent actors including Charles Dance as an American president with a wholly unexplained strong British accent.

The script provides numerous humorous incidents and character studies and yet for me failed to land fully. The target of the satire, ineffectual leaders providing only rehashed, recycled, and generic observations on problems facing the world is sharp enough the point of the satire seemed to have passed me by entirely. It was clear that the filmmakers have little regard or respect for world leaders but provided no other path or course of action.

The film doesn’t go as far as to live wholly within a realm of ‘dream logic’ like something from David Lynch yet and it is beyond our own sense of reality. (The lack of any ‘protective services’ is simply never addressed. In the film’s world the U.S. President, not to mention the others, simply have no one guarding them day and night.)

What enjoyment I derived from viewing this film lays entirely with the cast and their performances, particularly with Cate Blanchett who simply commanded my attention every moment she existed on the screen.

I honestly am glad I took the time to see this in the theaters, but I also cannot recommend this film as anyone reaction is likely to be so idiosyncratic as to make recommendations pointless.